Greece was battling wildfires that have been exacerbated by scorching weather and temperature records have been broken repeatedly in the United States, Europe and China.
Experts have said climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has played a key role in worsening destructive weather like the current extreme temperatures.
The exceptional heat has prompted safety warnings, with France on Wednesday saying temperatures of up 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) were expected in parts of the nation's south.
Two forest fires, fanned by strong winds, were raging to the west of Athens, while another broke out on the tourist island of Rhodes -- forcing locals to make painful decisions on whether to flee.
"I am not leaving. I started building this house when I was 27 years old by myself," said Dimitris Michaelous, a resident in the fire-threatened town of Pournari.
"I will stay here at least to watch it burn. I am not leaving," he added.
With a new wave of heat expected to hit Greece from Thursday, the minister called on the population to be extremely careful to not spark new fires.
Beijing broke a 23-year-old record with 27 consecutive days of temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit), forecasters said.
"At noon, it feels like the sun is roasting my legs, it feels like my skin is burning. It (Beijing summers) wasn't this hot before," said 22-year-old student Qiu Yichong.
Phoenix broke a similar record, in place for 49 years, with its 19th consecutive day of temperatures of 43.3 Celsius or higher, weather officials said.
In southern France, a record 29.5C was recorded in the Alpine ski resort of Alpe d'Huez, while 40.6C had been recorded for the first time in Verdun in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
- Heatwave on horizon -
In the Canary Islands, some 400 firefighters battled a blaze that has ravaged 3,500 hectares of forest and forced 4,000 residents to evacuate, with authorities warning people to wear face masks outside due to poor air quality.
Temperatures were unforgiving in Italy and in Spain, where three regions were put under hot weather red alerts.
The Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily have been forecast to possibly surpass a continent-wide record of 48.8C recorded in Sicily in August 2021.
At Lanusei, near Sardinia's eastern coast, a children's summer camp was restricting beach visits to the early morning and forbidding sports, teacher Morgana Cucca told AFP.
In the Sardinian capital of Cagliari, pharmacist Teresa Angioni said patients were complaining of heat-related symptoms.
"They mainly buy magnesium and potassium supplements and ask us to measure their blood pressure, which is often low," Angioni said.
Many throughout Italy sought escape by the sea, including outside Rome, where the midday heat hit 40C.
"Certainly it's better at the beach, you can at least get a little wind from the sea. It's not even possible to remain in the city, too hot," said Virginia Cesario, 30, at the Focene beach near the capital.
- Climate change impact -
Tens of millions of Americans experienced dangerous heat levels on Tuesday.
In the town of San Angelo, Texas, where temperatures were expected to reach 104-108F (40-42C), the National Weather Service said it was "running out of ways to say that it's gonna be hot out there today."
"With temperatures across the area likely topping the 105 mark yet again, we implore you to continue to practice heat safety and try to stay cool," the agency said on Twitter.
And in Arizona, the mercury at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport again reached 110F on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 18 consecutive days at or above that temperature, set in 1974.
The heat waves across Europe and the globe are "not one single phenomenon but several acting at the same time", said Robert Vautard, director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace climate institute.
"But they are all strengthened by one factor: climate change."
The record-setting heat came as US climate envoy John Kerry met with Chinese officials in Beijing, with the world's two largest polluters reviving stalled diplomacy on reducing planet-warming emissions.
Speaking Tuesday at Beijing's Great Hall of the People with China's top diplomat Wang Yi, Kerry called for "global leadership" on climate issues.
What is making 2023 likely the hottest year recorded
Paris (AFP) July 18, 2023 -
Human-made climate change is supercharging natural weather phenomena to drive heatwaves roasting Asia, Europe and North America that could make 2023 the hottest year since records began, scientists say.
Here experts explain how 2023 has got so hot, warning these record temperatures will get worse even if humanity sharply cuts its planet-warming gas emissions.
- El Nino and more -
After a record hot summer in 2022, this year the Pacific warming phenomenon known as El Nino has returned, heating up the oceans.
"This may have provided some additional warmth to the North Atlantic, though because the El Nino event is only just beginning, this is likely only a small portion of the effect," Robert Rohde of US temperature monitoring group Berkeley Earth wrote in an analysis.
The group calculated that there was an 81-percent chance that 2023 would become the warmest year since thermometer records began in the mid-19th century.
- Dust and sulphur -
The warming of the Atlantic may also have been sharpened by a decrease of two substances that typically reflect sunlight away from the ocean: dust blowing off the Sahara desert and sulphur aerosols from shipping fuel.
Rohde's analysis of temperatures in the North Atlantic region noted "exceptionally low levels of dust coming off the Sahara in recent months."
This was due to unusually weak Atlantic trade winds, said Karsten Haustein of Germany's federal Climate Service Centre.
Meanwhile new shipping restrictions in 2020 slashed toxic sulphur emissions. "This would not explain all of the present North Atlantic spike, but may have added to its severity," Rohde noted.
- 'Stagnant' anticyclones -
Warming oceans affect land weather patterns, prompting heatwaves and droughts in some places and storms in others. The hotter atmosphere sucks up moisture and dumps it elsewhere, said Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading.
Scientists highlighted the length and intensity of the lingering anticyclone systems bringing the heatwaves.
"Where stagnant high-pressure areas persist over continents, the air sinks and warms, melting away clouds, causing intense summer sunshine to parch the soils, heating the ground and air above," with heatwaves "lodged in place" for weeks, Allan said.
In Europe, "the hot air which pushed in from Africa is now staying put, with settled high pressure conditions meaning that heat in warm sea, land and air continues to build," added Hannah Cloke, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.
- Climate change's role -
Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in their global summary report this year that climate change had made deadly heatwaves "more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s".
This month's heatwaves are "not one single phenomenon but several acting at the same time," said Robert Vautard, director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace climate institute. "But they are all strengthened by one factor: climate change."
Higher global temperatures make heatwaves longer and more intense. Despite being the main driver, climate change is one variable that humans can influence by reducing emissions from fossil fuels.
"We are moving out of the usual and well-known natural oscillations of the climate to unchartered and more extreme territory," said Melissa Lazenby, senior lecturer in climate change at the University of Sussex.
"However, we have the ability to reduce our human influence on the climate and weather and to not create more extreme and long-lasting heatwaves."
- Heat forecast -
Berkeley Earth warned the current El Nino could make Earth even hotter in 2024.
The IPCC has said heatwaves risk getting more frequent and intense, though governments can limit climate change by reducing countries' greenhouse gas emissions.
"This is just the beginning," said Simon Lewis, chair of global change science at University College London.
"Deep, rapid and sustained cuts in carbon emissions to net zero can halt the warming, but humanity will have to adapt to even more severe heatwaves in the future."
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