Climate change blamed for spike in extreme heat deaths

The director-general of the World Health Organization has said more than 1,300 deaths recorded across Europe since June 21 can be linked to the extreme heat conditions that have affected the continent in recent days.

"Heat stress is often called the 'silent killer'," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X. "European homes, workplaces and schools were not built for these temperatures."

After the United Kingdom and France suffered particularly high temperatures last week, with around 1,000 more deaths than expected reported in France between Wednesday and Sunday, the weather front seems to be moving east.

A weather station in the German town of Coschen, near the border with Poland, recorded a third consecutive day of record temperatures on Sunday, with a reading of 41.7 C.

Across the river Oder, Poland's Institute of Meteorology and Water Management said the town of Slubice also broke a national temperature record. Record highs were also recorded in Czechia.

In the German capital Berlin, police used water cannons to cool down passers-by, spraying them with water at considerably lower pressure than usually used.

Italy saw mudslides as storms that followed extended periods of high temperatures caused downpours, with some rivers overflowing their banks.

Tedros blamed climate change for the fact that Europe is, in his words, warming at twice the global average, and said governments needed to "implement heat health action plans … driven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the 'once-in-a-generation' heat wave is now occurring nearly yearly".

"Heat waves like this are what we expect to see in a changing climate," said John Kennedy, head of climate information at World Meteorological Organization.

"In the 50 years since the historic heatwave in 1976, Europe as a whole has warmed by around two degrees. It's the fastest warming continents and extremes of temperature have increased too," he said.

Agence-France Presse claimed that on Monday, at least 130 million Europeans would experience temperatures of 35 C and above.

Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and coauthor of the World Weather Attribution study, told The Guardian newspaper there was "a sad inevitability to all of this, with scientists like me trotting out the same quotes year after year".

"Yes it's climate change, yes it's us, no it's not El Nino. Simply put, we remain on a one-way trip toward a more dangerous future, and it's time we hit the brakes," she said.

julian@mail.chinadailyuk.com