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The most severe and widespread June heatwave to hit Europe was made more brutal by the hot night-time temperatures and humidity, scientists said, and would have been virtually impossible without climate change.
Daytime temperatures in 45 per cent of cities analysed across 30 European countries breached the combined heat and humidity levels that are safe for human health, known as “wet bulb globe temperature”, the World Weather Attribution researchers said.
The heat-stress metric, which takes into account sun and wind exposure, is considered dangerous above 28C — roughly equivalent to an air temperature of 38C in dry heat.
Europe would look back on its hottest period as unusually cool unless greenhouse gas emissions were cut rapidly, Imperial College London professor in climate science Friederike Otto said. The temperature rise as a result of human activity during the industrial era is estimated at 1.4C.
The UK broke its June record at 36.7C in Somerset on Thursday, after tipping over the previous record when it hit 36.1C a day earlier.
In Paris, temperatures neared 41C, and heat-absorbing zinc rooftops caused temperatures in apartment buildings in the capital to soar further.
Night-time temperatures were highest in France, where some areas endured 30C. Tropical nights that do not fall below 20C make it harder for the human body to recover from heat stress.
France’s Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu reportedly told mayors on Thursday that financing would double for building work on hospitals including protecting them from extreme heat.
The heatwave is moving east across Europe and is expected to peak in Germany at the weekend at 41C. The Austrian weather agency also warned Vienna could hit a record 40C.
Italian cities were enduring early evening temperatures of more than 30C on Thursday. The Uffizi halted ticket sales because the museum’s air conditioning system was struggling. Formula 1 drivers were equipped with extra cooling gear ahead of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.
London’s mayor Sadiq Khan outlined priorities that included adding shutters to homes and retrofitting schools to lower temperatures.
The weather pattern behind the high pressure system that brought the hot air from north Africa across Europe was “normal” for this time of year, the WWA said.
A weakening of the jet stream — the band of air that encircles the globe powered by the temperature difference between the warm equator and the freezing poles, and locked the high pressure in place — was not a defining factor.
It was the critical levels of global warming that had caused temperatures to rise so sharply, the WWA concluded.
By comparison, the historic heatwave in 1976 was across a smaller area of the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, and lasted for a longer period of 15 days.
But the event 50 years ago occurred when global warming was put at just 0.3C and also did not involve as high humidity.
Heat was set to get worse in coming years, scientists said. “There are climate futures in which this could become an every-other-year event,” said Theodore Keeping, a scientist at Imperial College London who took part in the analysis. “We will expect an average summer to be warmer than this.”
Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and June is the fastest-warming month globally, the WWA confirmed. In part, the European warming is because of its proximity to the Arctic, where the melt of snow and ice exposes dark ground that absorbs more of the sun’s rays.
Temperatures have risen faster than infrastructure can deal with. Cities are more vulnerable to heat stress than rural parts of Europe because ageing, dense housing and public buildings were not designed for prolonged extreme heat.
Daytime temperature extremes in Europe were rising three times as fast, and night-time temperatures twice as fast as the broader rate of global warming, the WWA said. It confirmed the cyclical El Niño warming of the Pacific Ocean played no part in the latest heatwave.
The group of scientists from global institutions typically compare weather systems in the world we live in to those in a simulated model of Earth with lower levels of greenhouse gases. From this they can calculate how far extreme weather is linked to human-caused climate change. The latest study was not yet peer-reviewed.
But the scientists cautioned that a worsening cycle of heatwaves was not inevitable.
“Scientists like me are beginning to sound like a broken record, reacting year after year to heat extremes that climb ever higher,” said Otto. “Yes this is climate change, yes it’s us, yes we have the solutions, no we’re not implementing them fast enough.
“It’s really now a question of what kind of future we want for ourselves, and whether we’re willing to do what it takes to secure it.”
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