European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say

The Met Office has extended its red heat-health alert by 24 hours, to 11pm on Friday. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA View image in fullscreen The Met Office has extended its red heat-health alert by 24 hours, to 11pm on Friday. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say Study also finds high humidity means people in hundreds of cities are enduring their worst ever heat stress The heatwave scorching western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever and is only possible due to the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning, scientists have said. Almost half of Europe’s 850 largest cities are also enduring their worst ever heat stress, a combination of temperature and humidity, they found. Muggier conditions mean sweating is less effective at cooling the body, making heatwaves even more dangerous. The analysis comes as the UK recorded its hottest ever June temperature on Thursday , 36.4C (97.5F) in Somerset, and much of western Europe recorded a sharp rise in medical emergencies, including some deaths. In summer 2022, more than 60,000 people died due to heat in Europe. The statistical analysis needed to assess the impact of the current heatwave will take time to complete. Nonetheless, the heatwave is certain to exact a heavy toll and is also disrupting lives and livelihoods, with schools closed, hospitals struggling and rail and air journeys cancelled across the continent. The new analysis by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium shows how rapidly extreme heat is worsening as carbon pollution continues to pile up in the atmosphere. As recently as 2003, a heatwave like the current one in Europe would have been 2C cooler due to the lower level of global heating at the time. In 1976, another famous heatwave year, it would have been 3.5C cooler. The sweltering night-time temperatures currently harming people’s sleep are about 100 times more likely today than in 2003. The scientists warned that without urgent climate action, future heat conditions would get even more extreme and the current summer could seem relatively cool in retrospect. “This is the most severe and widespread heatwave to have ever affected this large a region of Europe,” said Dr Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather research associate at Imperial College London and part of the WWA team. “We found that in the last 50 years, during which time the planet has warmed by 1.1C, the chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely. This event would not have been possible in June without climate change. But do we expect this to be a cool summer going forward? That’s absolutely the case.” He said many capital cities were experiencing not only their hottest recorded three-day period in June but the hottest three-day period at any time of year. At least 100 million people in Europe were expected to face temperatures above 35C on Thursday. The scientists used wet bulb globe temperatures to assess the a