A stubborn dome of high pressure that has baked Western Europe for more than a week is now sliding east, and forecasters say Central and Eastern Europe are next in line for dangerous, record-threatening heat.
A lethal wave moves east
The heat wave has already proved deadly. More than 400 deaths across Europe have been linked to the extreme temperatures so far, the bulk of them in Spain, with others in France and the United Kingdom, according to tallies cited by Al Jazeera — a toll expected to rise as records are reconciled. Western Europe saw extraordinary highs in recent days, with national and local records falling in France and Spain.
Now meteorologists are forecasting peak temperatures in the low 40s Celsius (well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) across eastern Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, parts of the Balkans and into Romania in the coming days, with very warm air reaching Belarus and Ukraine. The World Weather Attribution group reported that an estimated 150 million Europeans experienced temperatures above 35 C on a single day this week.
Why the heat is so dangerous
Much of Europe is poorly adapted to extreme heat. Only about a fifth of European homes have air conditioning, a legacy of historically mild summers, leaving the elderly, children and lower-income households with little relief — especially during "tropical nights," when temperatures stay too high for the body to recover. Health officials note that people over 65 account for the large majority of heat deaths, and that the risk falls hardest on those in poorly insulated housing or outdoor jobs.
National weather services have issued warnings for extreme wildfire danger as low humidity and shifting winds dry out the landscape. Earlier phases of the heat dome strained infrastructure across the west: French nuclear plants cut output because cooling water grew too warm, and transport networks were disrupted by warped rails and heat-stressed equipment. Authorities further east are bracing for similar pressures on hospitals and power grids.
The climate context
Scientists were quick to tie the event to a warming climate. The World Weather Attribution group concluded that this heat wave is among the most severe Europe has recorded and would have been far less likely, and cooler, without human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions — estimating that a comparable event in the climate of the 1970s would have been roughly 3 C cooler. Europe is warming at about twice the global average rate, and heat waves that were once rare are now arriving far more often, Al Jazeera reported.
The European Union's Copernicus climate service recorded land-surface temperatures above 50 C across parts of France earlier in the week — a surface measurement that runs hotter than air temperature, but one that captures the scale of the heat now bearing down on the continent's east. Forecasters expect the dome to ease into early July, though the relief may arrive with violent thunderstorms as cooler Atlantic air collides with the superheated land.
