ABOUTOn Wednesday, Pierre Masselo received a message from his daughter’s nursery – less than 50 miles from the weather station that was the first to break Britain’s June temperature record this week – asking parents to pick up their children early because school buildings were about to get alarmingly hot.
Similar scenes have been repeated across Europe this week as the continent experiences its strongest and most widespread heatwave on record – a crushing force made hotter by carbon pollution and less tolerable by repeated failures to prepare for it. France experienced its hottest days and nights on record, with the UK and Switzerland breaking their heat records for a June day.
For Masselo, an environmental epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who has become one of Europe’s leading detectives calculating the hidden death toll from heatwaves, the past few days are reminiscent of the terrible summer heat wave that gripped Europe in 2003. Although he was then too young to fear for his health, he was old enough to realize the horrors it held.
Then the teenager from southern France was shooting basketballs in the sun at summer camp as brutal August heat turned cities across Europe into ovens. Hot days strained the body, and warm nights spoiled the rest. Older people, especially women and those who lived alone, made up the bulk of the 70,000 victims who died that summer. extreme heat.
Now the exceptions of the past have become the norms of today, and the exceptions of today will soon become the norms of tomorrow. By the time baby Masselo turns 14 (the same age as in 2003), global warming will have risen well above the 1.5C (2.7F) target world leaders promised to keep rising temperatures at by the end of the century, with severe extremes reaching uncharted heights.
Trying to keep my cool in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/EPA.
“Climate scientists have been saying for a long time that there will be a lot more of us in 2003,” said Masselo, now 37. “It is now painfully obvious that this is the case.”
above average heat map
Yet despite repeated warnings and growing awareness, heatwaves are still bringing large parts of the continent to their knees. Several hospitals in England reported critical incidents as a result of the heatwave, with refrigeration units failing and critical IT systems grinding to a halt, while schools, workplaces and railways were thrown into chaos and bushfires broke out. In France, where half of all homes are poorly protected from extreme heat, more than 55 people have drowned trying to cool off, four young children have died in hot cars and two nuclear reactors have been forced to shut down due to a lack of cooling water.
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Simply put, we remain on a one-way path to a more dangerous future, and it’s time to hit the brakes.
Friederike Otto
Has Europe not learned its lessons from its past? The devastation of the summer of 2003 sparked the first serious attempts to manage the heat, as governments linked early warning systems to rapid response measures to rising temperatures, such as limiting travel, closing schools and canceling non-urgent hospital appointments. Research has shown that this adaptation has been successful: mortality rates are now much less sensitive to changes in temperature. If the 2003 heat wave struck today with the same force as the November study found, the projected death toll would be 75% lower.
But at the same time, heat waves are becoming hotter, longer lasting and more widespread—and it is far from clear that adaptation efforts will keep pace with the rising concentration of planet-warming pollutants in the atmosphere. This year, early warning systems were in place before the start of summer, when a shock May heat wave gripped north-west Europe and broke the UK’s all-time May temperature record by as much as 2 degrees. Two weeks later, World Health Organization (WHO) European chief Hans Kluge spoke in Berlin to announce an update to WHO guidelines on heat health action plans, 18 years after they were first published. Only two weeks have passed since then, and the heat in Berlin is 40 degrees.
A woman in London on Friday as the UK recorded its highest ever temperature for June. Photo: Anadolu/Getty Images
“The tragedy is twofold,” Kluge said of the 200,000 lives the WHO estimates Europe has lost due to heat waves over the past four years. “First, most of these deaths were completely preventable; and secondly, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and millions of people have suffered physically and mentally.”
Climate disruption is warming Europe faster than any other continent – as a result of local weather patterns and proximity to the rapidly melting Arctic – and the current heat wave is no exception to its effects. A fast attribution study released Friday by World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that just 50 years ago this would have been “virtually impossible” at this time of year.
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Graph shows Europe is the fastest-warming continent
Of particular concern for human health are the sweltering overnight temperatures reached this week, which scientists found were about 100 times more likely than in 2003, while daytime peaks were about 10 times more likely. They ruled out any influence from El Niño, a natural warming weather pattern that recently formed in the Pacific Ocean. It will peak in strength by the end of the year and will likely make 2027 the hottest year on record in the world.
For scientists who have long warned that heat waves are getting worse as carbon pollution rises, the failure to follow expert advice has become tiresome. “There’s a sad inevitability about all this: scientists like me come up with the same quotes year after year,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the WWA study, speaking before this week’s records were broken. “Yes, it’s climate change, yes, it’s us, no, it’s not El Niño. Simply put, we remain on a one-way path to a more dangerous future, and it’s time to hit the brakes.”
What can be done? Heat and health experts have called for more shading to keep heat out of homes, better ventilation to cool them as they warm, and more green space in cities to counter the urban heat island effect. Hospitals need more support and citizens should check on neighbors who are old or vulnerable due to illness. Some experts are wary of the mass rollout of air conditioning, which increases the risk of power cuts and worsens the urban heat island effect, but still want them used in nursing homes, hospitals, schools and public transport. The latest WHO guidance recommends nuanced implementation, saying it is “not a sustainable social solution” but “remains critical” for those at increased risk of high temperatures.
The WHO’s position was loudly rejected by the far right in the US, turning European disgust at mass air conditioning into a meme about the poor and overregulated continent. In a post on X promoted by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of the platform, the US CTO shared a screenshot of chatbot-generated text that said: “Europeans should just install air conditioning” and “The American approach to summer was right all along.” The post was viewed 19.5 million times.
An air conditioning hose hangs from a window in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Photo: ANP/Shutterstock
Similar sentiments are shared by Europe’s far-right parties, which are fighting to expand the use of clean energy or make homes more energy efficient. Just under a year ago, Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far right, called for a “grand plan” for air conditioning, the same week her party tried to block new wind and solar projects. The latest heat wave has seen the debate reignite in France months before the presidential election.
However, urgent calls to cut emissions continue to be ignored as centrist governments across Europe weaken climate policies and roll back green regulations in the name of competitiveness. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who warned London was “cooking” earlier in the week, repeated his long-standing calls at London Climate Action Week on Tuesday to stop burning fossil fuels. The next day, the organizers of the related extreme heat management group canceled it because it was too hot. The next day, US President Donald Trump advised likely next UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to “open up the North Sea” to oil and gas drilling, despite experts saying it is a mature basin that has already used at least 90% of available fossil fuels.
For Masselo, whose typical summer as a child involved staying indoors with all the shutters closed – “you’re basically living in a cave from 10am to 6pm” – there has at least been some progress in awareness of the heat and how best to cope with it. “People have learned their lessons and now we know what consequences this can have,” he said. “But sometimes it seems like once summer is over, we forget about it.”