Spain
records highs of 46C and France under alert as Europe swelters in heatwave
Extreme heat
‘the new normal’, says UN chief, as authorities across the continent issue
health warnings
Ajit
Niranjan, European environment correspondent, and Sam Jones in Seville
Mon 30 Jun
2025 16.16 BST
A vicious
heatwave has engulfed southern Europe, with punishing temperatures that have
reached highs of 46C (114.8F) in Spain and placed almost the entirety of
mainland France under alert.
Extreme
heat, made stronger by fossil fuel pollution, has for several days scorched
Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece as southern Europe endures its first
major heatwave of the summer.
The high
temperatures have prompted the authorities in several countries to issue new
health warnings and scramble firefighters to prevent wildfires from breaking
out. More than 50,000 people in Turkey have been evacuated from their homes due
to forest fires, according to the interior ministry’s disaster and emergency
management authority.
António
Guterres, the UN secretary general, said at a development conference in Seville
on Monday: “Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new
normal.”
In Portugal
— his home country — a reading of 46.6 C (115.9F) was registered in Mora, about
60 miles east of Lisbon. Weather officials were working to confirm whether that
marked a new record for June.
The southern
Spanish city is forecast to roast in more than 40C heat for the next three days
and face night-time temperatures of at least 25C until Thursday morning.
Doctors have expressed alarm at the combination of hot days and uncomfortably
warm nights, which can place a lethal stress on the human body.
In Italy,
where 21 out of 27 cities were placed on the highest heat alert on Sunday,
hospital admissions in some of the hottest regions – such as Tuscany – are up
20%. People have been advised not to venture outside between 11am and 6pm.
In France,
heat warnings covered nearly the entire mainland for the first time in history.
Météo-France has placed 88% of administrative areas under the second-highest
orange heat alerts. “This is unprecedented,” said the ecology minister, Agnès
Pannier-Runacher.
The French
government asked businesses to adapt staff hours to protect workers from the
heat, and 200 public schools are to be partly or totally closed on Monday and
Tuesday. The first fire of the summer broke out in France in the south-west of
the country at the weekend, burning 400 hectares and leading to the
precautionary evacuation of more than 100 people from their homes.
In Spain,
which has had the worst of the weather, a June temperature record of 46C was
set on Saturday afternoon in El Granado, in the Andalucían province of Huelva.
The highest temperature previously recorded for June was 45.2C logged in
Seville in 1965.
Sunday was
the hottest 29 June in Spain on record, according to records from Aemet, the
Spanish meteorological agency, that stretch back to 1950. The heat is expected
to last till Thursday.
In Portugal,
where seven of 18 regions are under red warnings of “extreme risk”,
meteorologists expect the weather to cool down on Wednesday night.
Countries
farther north are also in danger. The German weather service has said heat and
dry weather are stoking the risk of forest fires, with some cities imposing
limits on water extraction as temperatures in parts of the country approach 40C
by Wednesday.
In
Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, the government has urged employers
to take the danger to their staff into account. “Companies are bound by heat
protection rules at the workplace,” the regional health minister Britta Müller
said, including maintaining an acceptable temperature indoors and guarding
against excessive sun exposure.
The UK is
projected to have temperatures of 34C in London and the south-east of England,
with the Met Office warning that high temperatures and humid conditions will be
“quite uncomfortable” for those working outside, as well as people leaving
Glastonbury and attending the start of Wimbledon.
Radhika
Khosla, an urban climatologist at the University of Oxford, said: “Populations
in urban areas like London are particularly susceptible to extreme heat as the
concrete and asphalt absorb and re-emit the sun’s radiation, amplifying its
impact on our bodies. For this reason, outdoor workers are particularly at risk
and should take regular breaks to hydrate in the shade.”
The
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said its teams
were supporting responders who were battling fires in Turkey, Greece and
Norway. In other countries such as Spain, Italy and the UK, its volunteers were
handing out water and checking in on vulnerable people.
Heat kills
an estimated half a million people globally each year, with older people and
those with chronic illness particularly vulnerable.
The extreme
temperatures across Europe are a result of a heat dome that is trapping an area
of high pressure and hot air – a phenomenon that is also currently scorching
the US. It comes amid an ongoing marine heatwave that has left the
Mediterranean 5C hotter than normal, according to data from the University of
Maine’s climate change institute.
Dr Michael
Byrne, a climate scientist at the University of St Andrews, said heat domes
were nothing new but the temperatures they delivered were. “Europe is more than
2C warmer than in preindustrial times, so when a heat dome occurs it drives a
hotter heatwave,” he said.
Doctors
across the continent warned people to take extra care in the hot weather,
encouraging them to stay out of the heat, drink lots of water, wear loose
clothing and check in on vulnerable neighbours.
Researchers
estimate that dangerous temperatures in Europe will kill 8,000 to 80,000 more
people by the end of the century, as the lives lost to stronger heat outpace
those saved from milder cold.
“The planet
is getting hotter and more dangerous,” said Guterres, who called for more
action to stop climate change. “No country is immune.”
Additional
reporting from Angelique Chrisafis in Paris, Angela Giuffrida in Rome and
Deborah Cole in Berlin
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