EPA/ShutterstockTemperatures broke June records in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands on Friday as the death toll from Europe’s heatwave climbed in Spain and France and authorities cancelled concerts and other public events because of health risks.
Germany’s highest ever temperature of 41.3C was recorded provisionally in the south-western city of Saarbrücken, just over the border from France, which this week endured its hottest temperatures three days in a row.
Although France’s heatwave has peaked, Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said the “emergence of deaths at home” was of particular concern.
World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman Clare Nullis warned of the “major impacts” to health, ecosystems, agriculture and labour, saying: “We need to get used to it, unfortunately.”
A top temperature of 39.4C was recorded in the southern Dutch province of Limburg. Meanwhile, in the UK a provisional June record of 37.1C was recorded at Cavendish in Suffolk.
At least 150 million people across the European continent were facing temperatures higher than 35C on Friday, according to calculations by the AFP news agency.
Czech meteorologists believe a 2012 record temperature of 40.4C could be broken on Saturday, while Austrian forecasters believe the national record will fall on Sunday. Balkan countries are seeing extreme heat too, with up to 39C forecast in Serbia over the weekend.
In Switzerland, the Beznau nuclear power plant took both reactors of grid on Friday because the temperature in the River Aare reached 25C, which is considered too high to cool the reactors sufficiently.
AFP via Getty ImagesAcross France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and southern England, temperatures are reaching 5–12°C above seasonal averages, driven by a persistent high-pressure system, scientists at World Weather Attribution said on Friday.
The group found that June was warming faster than any other month and, over the region studied, the current heatwave was “the most severe ever recorded”.
Climate change is driving up temperatures around the world, but in Europe especially. It is the fastest warming continent, heating up twice as fast as the global average, according to the Copernicus climate service.
The extreme heat led to a Eurostar rail service from Cologne to Paris breaking down east of Brussels with about 400 people on board on Friday morning. Three passengers were treated in hospital as a precaution, Belga news agency reported.
Health fears led to the cancellation of two big Paris events at the weekend, following pressure from the local prefecture, which said the hospital system was “saturated” and resources had to be focused on “helping the most vulnerable”.
The organisers of Saturday’s Paris Pride said they were looking to reschedule the march in September. The Solidays music festival at Longchamp racecourse had been due to start on Friday and run into Sunday, and attracted more than a quarter of a million visitors last year.
However, a third event threatened with cancellation, the Diamond League athletics meeting at Charléty stadium, will go ahead on Sunday after organisers agreed to an “adapted format” involving moving the start later into the afternoon.
Thousands of people had already arrived for Dutch music festival Defqon.1 on Thursday night when organisers said they had to pull the plug on the event because authorities had announced an unprecedented code red warning for extreme heat.
Festival goers reacted angrily to the decision, prompting police to be called to respond to reports of unrest.
Numerous events have also been cancelled in Germany, including Saturday’s Hamburg Half Marathon.
ReutersThe French health minister has warned that the extreme conditions will result in additional deaths, and an emergency plan has been put in place for all hospitals in the Paris region because of “multiple tensions” in healthcare.
In Marseille, an 18-month-old child died after being found in a car in a state of hyperthermia, in the latest such episode in France in a matter of days. A three-year-old became trapped in a car in Paris on Wednesday, and two young children lost their lives in a car in the southern town of Carpentras on Monday.
The number of deaths by drowning in France since the heatwave began has risen to 55. An estimated two-thirds of them had been swimming in unsupervised areas.
Spain’s MoMo monitoring system for reporting temperature-related deaths has counted 327 fatalities between Sunday and Thursday that could be linked to the heat, and most of them have been recorded in the past two days.
The high temperatures have begun to subside in Spain, however a forest fire broke out north-east of Barcelona forcing 16,000 to stay in their homes on Friday morning. A man was arrested on suspicion of arson.
Little relief is expected in much of Europe over the weekend, and a glacier research team in Switzerland has warned that the heatwave is being felt in the mountains too.
The Zurich team says almost all the winter reserves built up on the glaciers are about to run out, most likely on Monday, at which point the glaciers will start melting.
That moment usually takes place in August, but Swiss researchers say the current course of glacial melting is almost as bad as in 2022, the worst year on record, when as much as 6% of the glaciers’ mass was lost.
