Version imprimableScientists who spoke to Nature say that a European heatwave lasting four or five days, with London approaching 40°C, is an anomaly. "It’s simply phenomenal," says Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. But researchers also say that people in Europe can expect to see more of these phenomena in the future as global warming continues.
"Heat waves are here to stay, until we turn off the tap of global emissions," says Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK. "They are more frequent, more intense, and last longer."
The risks are serious. In France – which this week recorded its hottest day ever, with 44.3 °C in the town of Pissos – at least 54 people have died from heat or from drowning in water flows while trying to cool off.
What researchers do not necessarily agree on is the speed with which Europe’s climate has gone from cool and pleasant summers, in which residents could leave their windows open, to one dominated by extreme heat and doubts as to whether to buy an air conditioner.
New maximums
An study published on June 26 examined temperatures in 854 cities across Europe – home to 30% of the population – and revealed that almost half of them have broken or will break their historical heat stress records this month. According to the analysis, conducted by the World Weather Attribution group (an international organisation that studies extreme weather phenomena), all the cities analysed in the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Luxembourg have recorded unprecedented highs.
"What was once rare has become a common occurrence," says Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Temperature records "are being broken constantly, everywhere, and in fact are being surpassed by wide margins." According to him, these records in Europe would be unthinkable in the sporting field: it would be like a high jumper "under the effects of steroids" breaking a record by half a metre, instead of by one or two centimetres.
So what is causing the current heat wave? Like the previous ones, it has been triggered by air circulation patterns that carry heat from the equator to the icy North Pole, explains Lara Wallberg, a climate modeller at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (Germany). Although this air circulation is not fully understood, some scientists believe that when sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic drop, as is happening now, warm air from North Africa and the Sahara Desert can become temporarily trapped over Europe, explains Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the University of Potsdam in Germany.
"Obvious beyond belief"
According to researchers, climate change is also influencing the intensity of this particular heat wave. Furthermore, the high temperatures caused by global warming have dried out the soil and reduced evaporative cooling in Europe, says Clair Barnes, a researcher at Imperial College London, specialising in extreme weather events. Cloud cover, which would normally reflect the sun’s heat back into space, has also decreased in Europe, due to a combination of drought conditions and stricter air quality laws since the 1980s, which have reduced aerosol pollution, Barnes adds. (Aerosols can act as scaffolding for cloud formation.)
In fact, some scientists believe that Europe began its transition to a different climate in the 1980s. "In Europe, especially since 1980, there has been a huge uptick in global temperatures," says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a California-based nonprofit organisation that tracks global temperatures. "It’s pretty clear in the data."
Source: Ref. 1/World Weather Attribution
June 26 2026
Translated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint from vientosur.
References
Keeping, T. et al. Las emisiones de combustibles fósiles han agravado rápidamente las olas de calor en Europa en tan solo unas décadas (World Weather Attribution, 2026).
Krüger, J., Kjellsson, J., Kedzierski, R. P. y Claus, M. *Tellus* 75, 358–374 (2023).
Servicio de Cambio Climático de Copernicus y Organización Meteorológica Mundial. Informe sobre el estado del clima en Europa 2025 (ECMWF y OMM, 2026).
Boboc, L., Dima, M., Vaideanu, P. e Ionita, M. Weather Clim. Extrem. 49, 100794 (2025).
Zhang, R., Sun, C., Zhu, J., Zhang, R. y Li, W. npj Clim. Atmos. Sci. 3, 7 (2020).
