Temperature
records broken as extreme heat grips parts of Europe
Unprecedented
temperatures causing difficulties in south-west France, Croatia, Italy and
Spain with wildfire destruction across Europe up 87%
Ajit
Niranjan
Wed 13
Aug 2025 06.00 BST
Extreme
heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest,
and driving bigger and stronger wildfires.
In
south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angoulême, Bergerac,
Bordeaux, Saint-Émilion and Saint-Girons. Météo France said the “often
remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures” in the region were 12C
above the norm for the last few decades.
In
Croatia, air temperature records were set in Šibenik, at 39.5C, and Dubrovnik,
at 38.9C, while large forest fires raged along its coasts and ripped through
neighbouring countries in the Balkans.
Beyond
Europe, dozens of temperature records were broken across Canada, and
record-breaking heat above 50C in Iraq was blamed for a nationwide blackout.
The
heatwave in southern Europe comes as Nordic countries recover from
unprecedentedtemperatures above 30C in the Arctic Circle this month.
Bob Ward,
a policy director at the Grantham Research Institute, said: “This summer, like
every summer now, has been exceptional in terms of extreme heat around the
world.”
In Italy,
where 16 of 27 major cities were placed under red heat alerts and a
four-year-old boy died of heatstroke, and in Spain, where a man died in a
wildfire after suffering burns on 98% of his body, the high heat did not break
a large number of records but still rang alarm bells.
“The main
characteristic [of the heatwave] is the length and extent rather than the
intensity,” said José Camacho, a climate scientist and spokesperson for Aemet,
the Spanish weather agency. “But the temperatures are still very high.”
In the
south-west of France, 40% of a sample of weather stations recorded temperatures
above 40C on Monday. Lauriane Batté, a climate scientist at Météo France, said
it was too soon to say if records were being “shattered” rather than simply
broken, but said the geographic extent of the heat was significant.
“Unfortunately,
it’s to be expected,” she said, adding that more than half of the 51 heatwaves
in France since 1947 had occurred in the last 15 years. “Clearly, it’s a sign
that the climate is warming.”
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The hot
weather across Europe has dried out vegetation and allowed wildfires to spread
further, in what scientists have described as a “molotov cocktail” of climatic
conditions. EU fire scientists projected “extreme to very extreme conditions”
across the entire continent this week, with “particularly severe” risks in much
of southern Europe and high anomalies expected in parts of the Nordics.
Wildfires
in Europe have burned more than 400,000 hectares so far this year, according to
data published on Tuesday, which is 87% more than the average for this time of
year over the last two decades.
High heat
kills tens of thousands of people in Europe each year. Researchers estimate
that dangerous temperatures in Europe will kill 8,000 to 80,000 more people a
year by the end of the century as the lives lost to stronger heat outpace those
saved from milder cold weather.
Antonio
Gasparrini, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine, said implementing effective and diverse public health measures was
critical as heatwaves became more frequent.
“This is
another extreme heatwave hitting Europe this summer,” he said. “As in previous
events in the past months, we can expect not just a substantial death toll but
also strong geographical differentials in excess mortality.”
Last
week, the World Meteorological Organization said wildfires and poor air quality
were compounding the negative health effects of extreme heat. It noted that
temperatures during the first week of August reached more than 42C in parts of
west Asia, southern central Asia, most of north Africa, southern Pakistan, and
the south-west US, with local areas exceeding 45C.
“This is
what climate change looks like,” Ward said. “And it will only get worse.”
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