Climate change is massively exacerbating the current heat wave in Europe. This is the region’s worst heat wave ever recorded.
A man tries to cool off in Toulouse, France. The heat wave that is currently gripping Europe would have been 3.5 degrees Celsius cooler 50 years ago. Imago / Alain Pitton
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If climate change had not progressed so far, the unprecedentedly long and intense June heat wave, which is approaching its peak at the weekend, would be noticeably cooler: In 1976, under similar circumstances, daytime temperatures would have been around 3.5 degrees Celsius lower and nighttime temperatures around 2.4 degrees lower, experts from the World Weather Attribution Initiative (WWA) calculated in a quick analysis.
The international research group led by the study’s first author Theodore Keeping from Imperial College in London has also carried out calculations on how strongly the underlying progressive and man-made global warming is affecting individual European metropolises that are particularly affected by the current heat wave. Vienna is among those European capitals in which the extreme temperatures recorded over three days increased significantly faster than would be expected given the global average increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius since 2003. In the Austrian capital, the increase is more than twice as high as would actually be expected based on the world trend. The finding also applies to another 13 capitals, as the researchers write.
It is clear that Europe is heating up faster than any other continent. In this country, the “Second Austrian Assessment Report on Climate Change” (AAR2) from last year showed an average warming of 3.1 degrees Celsius compared to 1900. “A trend that can be traced back with great certainty to human-caused climate change,” write the researchers from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Hungary. This is accompanied by a statistically higher probability that summer heat waves can also be more intense – a connection that has been studied many times.
The researchers’ data shows that 45 percent of the 854 cities analyzed have broken their historical heat records or will do so. As things stand, Vienna is not included. World Weather Attribution
Overall, science has made great progress in recent years in linking individual extreme events – such as the devastating floods in Austria in autumn 2024 – with the overall trend of a warming climate. The WWA initiative was founded in 2014 and presents such studies again and again – also in response to current events.
The current June heat wave has a probability of recurrence of several decades or up to around 100 years in many regions. “We see that this event was almost impossible in the climate that prevailed 50 years ago,” write the scientists.
In 2003, Europe was already suffering from a massively hot summer. The events at that time led to around 70,000 deaths, which can be attributed to the stress caused by the increased temperatures. According to calculations 23 years ago, the current wave would have been about two degrees Celsius cooler in daytime and 1.3 degrees in nighttime temperatures on average, the report says.
When it comes to the burden on humans, the researchers use a measure of the combined effect of humidity, sunlight and air movements. These factors combine to influence how well the body can handle the heat. According to the study, the previous record for this measure of heat stress is currently being exceeded in over 90 percent of cities in Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. This also applies to more than half of the cities examined in Denmark, Slovakia, Belgium, Ireland, Great Britain and Austria.
You can see that the recent increase in summer temperatures in Europe is already bringing society to the edge of what it can handle. In order to avoid even more excessive heat waves and higher average temperatures, we need to quickly phase out the burning of fossil fuels, the experts note. (APA)
