Heat in France, Spain, Italy and the U.K. is exacerbating drought and wildfires and threatening human health
CLIMATEWIRE | Record-breaking temperatures and vicious wildfires swept through Western Europe and the United Kingdom this weekend, in what may be one of the region’s most extreme heat waves on record.
This is the second heat wave to sweep through Europe in the past month. Climate change has led to more frequent and worsening heat waves around the world, with Western Europe particularly impacted. The region’s heat waves are increasing in frequency about three times faster — and in intensity four times faster — than in the rest of the midlatitudes, according to a recent study.
“This is likely to lead to widespread impacts on people and infrastructure,” he said. “Therefore, it is important people plan for the heat and consider changing their routines.” But Europe is particularly at risk because of the splitting of the jet stream, a giant ribbon of fast-flowing air that circles the Northern Hemisphere. The phenomenon known as a “double jet” is happening more often and lasting longer — and it’s often linked to long-lasting heat events over Western Europe .
“Greenhouse gas emissions, from burning fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil, are making heatwaves hotter, longer-lasting and more frequent,” Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-lead of the extreme weather research consortium World Weather Attribution, said in a statement. “Heatwaves that used to be rare are now common; heatwaves that used to be impossible are now happening and killing people.
Europe isn’t the only place this is happening, Otto pointed out. North America’s Pacific Northwest region had a similar experience last summer, when an astonishing heat wave sent temperatures soaring over 110 F, and even 120 F, in some places.
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