Europe Swelters Under Early Heat Wave As France Records 40 Drowning Deaths

PARIS (AP) — Millions of people across Europe were exposed to extremely and unusually high temperatures on Tuesday; While people living in France wanted to get rid of the scorching heat, 40 deaths were recorded due to drowning last week.

In France, the European country most affected by the early summer heat wave so far, temperatures will remain high at all hours of the day. National weather service Meteo France has placed 54 departments, nearly half of the country, under red heatwave alert.

Italy, Spain and England were also hit.

human caused climate change increasingly extreme weather conditions and UN climate agency forecasts for the next five years break more heat records.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that the majority of the 40 people who drowned since last Thursday were young people.

In a country that doesn’t exist widespread air conditioningSchools, public transport and sporting events were affected. Extreme conditions are expected to continue through at least the weekend; Daytime temperatures in many towns hover above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

“More record-breaking temperatures are expected, including temperatures that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” Meteo France said.

The heat wave was extremely intense and arrived very early in the summer, but “its duration is still uncertain,” the weather service said. This was compared to the August 2003 heatwave, when the highest temperatures in more than half a century caused an estimated 15,000 deaths; most of these were among older people living in apartments and nursing homes without air conditioning.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s. More than 200,000 people across Europe have died from heat-related causes in the past four years, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization’s European office said this month.

Above average temperatures can cause Heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.

Across the Channel from France, many British schools were closed and trains disrupted for the day, the UK weather agency Met Office issued a red extreme heat warning on Wednesday and Thursday, with forecasts suggesting June’s all-time daily temperature record could be broken.

Temperatures are expected to reach around 37 degrees C (98.6 F) in southern England and up to 35 degrees C (95 F) in south-east Wales. The peak of the heatwave is now forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, when top temperatures could reach at least 39 C (102.2 F). The Met Office said conditions were expected to ease by Friday.

On Tuesday, several train operators in the UK said they would cancel train services to “ensure the safe operation of the railway”. National Rail, which operates the rail infrastructure, urged people to “only travel if absolutely necessary” on Wednesday and Thursday.

Further south on the continent, Spain is facing a heat wave in several parts of the Iberian Peninsula.

Aemet, Spain’s national weather service, issued a red alert for temperatures of 44 C (111 F) in southern Andalusia on Tuesday, warning that thermometers were reaching 40 C (104 F) in the normally temperate regions of Cantabria and the Basque Country on the north Atlantic coast.

Aemet meteorologist Rubén del Campo said Spain, which has recently experienced increasingly severe summers, will get even hotter due to climate change, with heat waves becoming more frequent, longer and occurring outside the traditional July and August window.

Of the dozens of heat waves Aemet has recorded in June since it started tracking in 1975, half have occurred since 2015, Del Campo said.

He said human-caused climate change was warming the atmosphere both above Spain and in the surrounding marine waters.

EU monitoring agency Copernicus found that 2024 is the hottest year on record in Europe and globally, with the continent experiencing its second-highest number of “heat stress” days.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of dryness, especially in hot weather, scientists warn Southeast EuropeThis makes the region more vulnerable to health impacts and wildfires.

The name of the body of water between France and England has been corrected to “English Channel”.

Associated Press journalists Sylvia Hui in London and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, ​​Spain contributed to this report.