Nearly half (45 per cent) of cities analysed across 30 European countries have already, or
are predicted to, break their highest ever heat stress levels.

This extreme June heat across Western Europe would have been impossible just a few decades ago according to a rapid attribution analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA).

Driven by a blocked high-pressure pattern that traps hot air over Europe and draws warm air up from the Sahara, WWA scientists used both observed and forecast temperature data to analyse the hottest three-day period across a large area of Europe sitting under this ‘heat dome’. They found unequivocally that climate change is the driving force behind the severity of the dangerous heat.

Both the daytime highs and overnight temperatures seen during this heatwave would have been virtually impossible to occur at this time of year as recently as 1976. A similar heatwave occurring in that historic climate would be 3.5C cooler.

Dr Theodore Keeping, extreme weather and wildfire researcher, Imperial College London said: “The speed of change is startling. Every few years we are seeing heat records shattered in Europe. This year it has been in consecutive months. In the UK, we are used to ‘snow days’ shutting down schools, but this generation is now growing up with ‘heat days’ as well.”

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