The extreme heat felt this summer in several European countries will be the rule in the coming decades, climatologists warn about the effects of global warming, which has already changed the habit of Europeans, now more attentive to climate changes.
“The heat waves don’t stop. I can’t take it anymore. Every time we think it’s over, the heat actually returns,” said Ayse Gurbuz, 25, a student in Lyon (east-central France), to the French agency AFP.
By August 19, France had already registered 52 days of heat waves since mid-June, a record as summer had not yet ended, and elsewhere in Europe temperatures reached absolute records: 45.1°C in Andújar (Spain) on June 22, 48.4°C in Orani (Sardinia) on July 19, or 42.2°C in Slovakia and 37°C in Denmark.
And with the heat come deaths. On August 6, Portuguese authorities recorded three periods of excess mortality in recent months, with 680 deaths above expected.
The Ricardo Jorge National Institute of Health (Insa) and the General Directorate of Health consider that the observed pattern shows that the majority of deaths occurred in people 75 years and older, with a predominance of circulatory, respiratory and neoplastic causes.
According to the two entities, deaths whose underlying cause of death was coded as exposure to excessive heat represent only a small part of the heat’s impact on mortality, since in most situations the heat acts as a triggering or aggravating factor for other pathologies and not as the basic cause of death recorded on the death certificate.
Extreme climate changes, which include periods of nearly tropical heavy rainfall, constitute “a brutal reminder of the cascading consequences of the climate crisis, both human and economic,” warned in May Simon Stiell, head of the UN Climate.
Across Europe, a new habit has set in: anxiously watching the thermometer rise and staying tuned to weather bulletins, but for French climatologist Jean Jouzel, this will be the new normal.
“What we are living is exactly what our scientific community has predicted for about thirty years,” said the former vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
On the first day of summer, signals came from the Basque Country and eight Italian cities, which entered red alert due to the heat wave, with schools closed, festivals canceled, and World Cup broadcasts or St. John’s bonfires suspended.
From mid-June to mid-August, more than 32,000 additional deaths were recorded in Europe, according to an interim tally.
The number of people suffering from eco-anxiety jumped to 2.6 million, according to a study by the Eco-Anxiety Observatory.
From southern Europe to the northern regions, by August 12 fires burned about 600,000 hectares.
In other places, drought emerged, turning lush landscapes into desolate horizons and, by the end of July, half the continent was in that situation.
In France, in Switzerland, in Austria and in Slovenia, soil moisture fell to historically low levels.
“Everything dried up suddenly. The only plants that grew were sorrel and thistle,” reported John Pawsey, a 62-year-old British farmer, in front of his quinoa fields scorched by the sun.
Large rivers such as the Rhine, the Loire or the Thames saw their flow decline; nuclear plants had to halt production for lack of water, and there appeared wrecks of ships or sunken World War II equipment.
Groundwater, despite being well recharged this winter, began to fall in France, in the Italian Piedmont and in Spain, forcing several municipalities to receive potable water supplies.
Also in the fields, water is already causing a stark shortage, affecting corn and sunflower yields and contributing to earlier harvests, including the grape harvest.
Even at sea, the thermometer spiked. In July, the Mediterranean recorded the highest-ever average surface temperature for this month, at 27.07 °C.
But this extreme summer foreshadows only the future, warns Jean Jouzel.
“By 2100, there is a high probability that 2026, if we take that year as a reference, will be considered ‘a normal summer,’” he warns, calling for a “wake-up call.”
“It is essential to understand that we are heading toward a catastrophe if we cannot reverse the trends,” he noted, speaking from his native Brittany, an Atlantic humid region where the thermometer surpassed 40 degrees several times this summer.
