European
heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say
Study
also finds high humidity means people in hundreds of cities are enduring their
worst ever heat stress
Damian Carrington Environment editor
Fri 26 Jun 2026 06.00 CEST
The heatwave scorching western Europe is the most severe
and widespread ever and is only possible due to the climate crisis driven by
fossil fuel burning, scientists have said.
Almost half of Europe’s 850 largest cities are also
enduring their worst ever heat stress, a combination of temperature and
humidity, they found. Muggier conditions mean sweating is less effective at
cooling the body, making heatwaves even more dangerous.
The analysis comes as the UK recorded its hottest ever
June temperature on Thursday, 36.4C (97.5F) in Somerset, and much of western
Europe recorded a sharp rise in medical emergencies, including some deaths.
In summer 2022, more than 60,000 people died due to heat
in Europe. The statistical analysis needed to assess the impact of the current
heatwave will take time to complete. Nonetheless, the heatwave is certain to
exact a heavy toll and is also disrupting lives and livelihoods, with schools
closed, hospitals struggling and rail and air journeys cancelled across the
continent.
The new
analysis by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium
shows how rapidly extreme heat is worsening as carbon pollution continues to
pile up in the atmosphere. As recently as 2003, a heatwave like the current one
in Europe would have been 2C cooler due to the lower level of global heating at
the time. In 1976, another famous heatwave year, it would have been 3.5C
cooler.
The
sweltering night-time temperatures currently harming people’s sleep are about
100 times more likely today than in 2003. The scientists warned that without
urgent climate action, future heat conditions would get even more extreme and
the current summer could seem relatively cool in retrospect.
“This is
the most severe and widespread heatwave to have ever affected this large a
region of Europe,” said Dr Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather research
associate at Imperial College London and part of the WWA team. “We found that
in the last 50 years, during which time the planet has warmed by 1.1C, the
chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely. This event would not have
been possible in June without climate change. But do we expect this to be a
cool summer going forward? That’s absolutely the case.”
He said
many capital cities were experiencing not only their hottest recorded three-day
period in June but the hottest three-day period at any time of year. At least
100 million people in Europe were expected to face temperatures above 35C on
Thursday.
The
scientists used wet bulb globe temperatures to assess the additional impact of
high humidity. “It accounts for the ability of the human body to cool itself
down. With the worst conditions ever experienced in 45% of cities over 50,000
people, the health impacts of this heatwave are likely to be extremely high,”
Keeping said. “The speed of change is startling.”
Commenting
on the WWA analysis, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said: “Climate
change is running rampant, caused by the world’s addiction to burning coal, oil
and gas. But the solutions are equally clear: a faster shift to clean energy –
which is now much cheaper than fossil fuels – as well as protecting forests and
building climate resilience.”
The WWA
team used both observed and reliable forecast temperature data to analyse the
hottest three-day period across a large area of western Europe, which is
sitting under a “heat dome”. Using peer-reviewed methods, they found
unequivocally that climate change was the driving force behind the severity of
the heat.
They
ruled out natural variability of the weather, in particular any influence from
the El Niño event that has begun in the Pacific Ocean. The current weather
pattern, a blocked high-pressure system trapping hot air over Europe and
drawing warm air up from the Sahara, is not unusual in summer, the scientists
said. Instead, the level of heat has been supercharged by global heating.
Carolina
Pereira Marghidan, of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said: “After
the devastating 2003 heatwave in Europe, many countries invested in early
warning systems and action plans. Research shows that those have saved many
lives, but it’s not enough.”
She said
intensifying heat was increasingly affecting health, transport, energy systems
and daily life. “We need greater investment in heat-resilient homes, cities and
infrastructure to keep people safe.”
The UK
government’s official adviser, the Climate Change Committee, said in May that
the country’s infrastructure was “built for a climate that no longer exists”
and needed urgent improvement to protect people from the climate crisis. The UK
Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found that more than 10,000 people died in
Britain owing to summer heatwaves between 2020 and 2024.
On
Wednesday, the London ambulance service responded to its highest ever number of
life-threatening emergencies in a single day – 641. Older people, children and
those with vulnerabilities are most at risk, but the current red alerts from
the UKHSA and Met Office warn that everyone is in danger. On Thursday the UKHSA
extended its red heat-health alert by 24 hours, to 11pm on Friday.
A study
of a smaller and less intense European heatwave in 2024 found that in 12 cities
alone, more than 2,300 people lost their lives in three days because of the
higher temperatures. “We found two-thirds of the 2,300 would not have died if
it wasn’t for climate change,” said Prof Friederike Otto, a climate scientist
at Imperial College London and a co-founder of WWA.
“Scientists
like me are beginning to sound like a broken record, reacting year after year
to heat extremes that climb ever higher,” she said. “Yes this is climate
change, yes it’s us, yes we have the solutions, no we’re not implementing them
fast enough. It’s really now a question of what kind of future we want for
ourselves, and whether we’re willing to do what it takes to secure it.”
Last
October, health experts said rising global heat was now killing one person a
minute around the world.
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