Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record last month, scientists said Thursday, as a long heat wave toppled records across France, Britain, Spain and other countries.
On average, June temperatures across Western Europe were 3.05 degrees Celsius, or 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit, above their normal levels from the past few decades, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service. Previously, the region’s hottest June on record was June of last year.
For the planet as a whole, it was the second warmest June on the books, Copernicus said. The globe last month was 1.39 degrees Celsius, or 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than it was at the start of the industrial era, when humans began heating the planet by burning oil, gas and coal at enormous scale.
“Together, these records reflect a climate system continuing to accumulate heat,” said Samantha Burgess, a climate scientist with Copernicus. “The result is increasingly intense heat waves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure across Europe and beyond.”
Last month’s intense heat in Western Europe came weeks after an earlier round of stifling heat in May. And it eased off shortly before temperatures in parts of the region began to soar yet again this week.
June temperature records were beaten by sizable margins in parts of England, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. France recorded its hottest day nationwide not merely for June, but for any month. And it did so not once, but three days in a row.
The atmospheric patterns that create prolonged episodes of unrelenting summer heat are not new. But they now occur against a backdrop of temperatures that are being driven higher, on average, by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. This allows temperatures during heat waves to climb more easily to record-breaking heights.
Scientists who assessed June’s heat in Western Europe concluded that climate change had greatly increased the chances that such a large section of the continent would experience such high temperatures for the month. The likelihood of such a severe heat wave had risen, the researchers said, even compared with 2003, when another extreme hot spell caused more than 70,000 excess deaths in Europe.
In France, health authorities reported 1,000 excess deaths during three of the country’s hottest days in late June. Eighty-five percent of the dead were 65 or older, though increases in excess mortality were recorded across all age groups, the country’s health agency said.
Scientists this week estimated that the total number of heat-related deaths in France last month may have exceeded 2,700.