Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest, and driving bigger and stronger wildfires. In south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angoulême, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Saint-Émilion and Saint-Girons. Météo France said the “often remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures” in the region were 12C above the norm for the last few decades.
In Croatia, air temperature records were set in Šibenik, at 39.5C, and Dubrovnik, at 38.9C, while large forest fires raged along its coasts and ripped through neighbouring countries in the Balkans. The day before, Hungary broke its daily maximum temperature record when a weather station in Körösladány hit 39.9C. The capital, Budapest, also broke its daily maximum record as it sweltered through 38.7C heat.
In Italy, 16 of 27 major cities were placed under red heat alerts and a four-year-old boy died of heatstroke. In Spain, a man died in a wildfire after suffering burns on 98% of his body. José Camacho, a climate scientist and spokesperson for Aemet, the Spanish weather agency, said: “The main characteristic [of the heatwave] is the length and extent rather than the intensity. But the temperatures are still very high.”
Wildfires in Europe have burned more than 400,000 hectares so far this year, according to data published on Tuesday, which is 87% more than the average for this time of year over the last two decades. Bob Ward, a policy director at the Grantham Research Institute, said: “This summer, like every summer now, has been exceptional in terms of extreme heat around the world. This is what climate change looks like. And it will only get worse.”
