The last:
- London is facing a “huge increase” in fires, the mayor says.
- Trains canceled due to concern that heat could break the rails.
- Fan sales are up 1,300%, says a UK retailer.
- Hundreds of heat-related deaths in Portugal, Spain.
- Large forest fires break out in France, Greece.
The UK on Tuesday broke its record for the highest temperature ever recorded amid a heat wave that has devastated areas of Europe. The UK national meteorologist said these highs are now a fact of life in a country ill-prepared for these extremes.
The nation, typically temperate, was the last to be affected by an unusually warm, dry climate that has caused forest fires from Portugal to the Balkans and caused hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames rushing to a suffocating French and British beach, even by the sea, have raised concerns at home about climate change.
The UK Met Office set its first record of 39.1 C in the morning, set in Charlwood, England. The weather agency in the afternoon recorded a provisional reading of 40.3 C in Coningsby, in the east of England. Prior to Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 ºC, which was only recently set in 2019. As of late Tuesday afternoon, 29 places in the UK had broken that record.
As the nation watched with a combination of horror and fascination, Met Office chief scientist Stephen Belcher said such temperatures in Britain were “virtually impossible” without human-driven climate change.
A person gets his hair wet on Tuesday at the source of Trafalgar Square in London. The stifling climate has disrupted travel, health care and schools in a country that is not prepared for these extremes. (Aaron Chown / PA via AP)
He warned that “we could see temperatures like this every three years” without acting seriously on carbon emissions.
The stifling climate has disrupted travel, health care and schools in a country that is not prepared for these extremes. Many homes, small businesses and even public buildings, including hospitals, do not even have air conditioning, a reflection of how unusual this heat is in the country best known for rain and mild temperatures.
The intense heat since Monday has damaged the runway at London’s Luton Airport, forcing it to close for several hours, and has deformed a main road in the east of England, leaving it resembling a “skatepark,” police said. Major train stations were closed or nearly empty on Tuesday as trains were canceled or run at low speed to worry that the rails could break.
London faced what Mayor Sadiq Khan called a “huge increase” in fires due to the heat. The London Fire Brigade listed 10 major fires it was fighting across the city on Tuesday, half of them grass fires.
The images showed several houses surrounded by flames as smoke came out of the burning fields in Wennington, a village on the outskirts of east London.
MIRAR | Houses caught fire on the hottest day in UK history:
Houses outside London are lit when Britain records the highest temperature in history
The London firefighting authority declares a major incident when houses outside the city caught fire on the hottest day ever recorded in the UK.
Fan sales from a retailer, Asda, rose 1,300%. Electric fans cooled the traditional mounted troops of the family cavalry as they guarded central London in heavy ceremonial uniforms. The length of the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace was shortened.
The capital’s Hyde Park, usually busy with hikers, was strangely quiet, except for the long queues for swimming in the Serpentine, the park’s lake.
“I go to my office because it’s nice and cool,” geologist Tom Elliott, 31, said after bathing. “I rode my bike instead of taking the subway.”
A sign warns passengers on Tuesday about high temperatures and their impact on rail services at a London train station. (Niklas Halle’n / AFP / Getty Images)
Always unconditional, Queen Elizabeth II continued to work. The 96-year-old monarch held a virtual audience with the new US ambassador Jane Hartley from the security of Windsor Castle.
Much of England, from London in the south to Manchester and Leeds in the north, is under the country’s first warning of “extreme” heat, meaning there is danger of death even for healthy people.
Climate change “call for attention”
These dangers could be seen in Britain and throughout Europe. At least six people were reported to have drowned while trying to cool off in UK rivers, lakes and reservoirs. In Spain and neighboring Portugal, hundreds of heat-related deaths have been reported due to the heat wave.
Climate experts warn that global warming has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, with studies showing that temperatures in the UK are likely to reach 40 C is now 10 times higher than in the pre-industrial era.
MIRAR | Why are temperatures rising so fast in Europe ?:
Europe is warming faster than much of the world, says the climate scientist
The heat wave surrounding much of Europe and the UK is due to global warming, says climate scientist Vikki Thompson, and this “accelerated trend” of heat waves will continue unless emissions are reduced. of greenhouse gases.
The head of the UN weather agency expressed hope that the heat gripping Europe would serve as a “ton of attention” for governments to do more about climate change. Other scientists used the timing of the milestone to emphasize that it was time to act.
“While still rare, 40 ° C is now a reality in British summers,” said Friederike Otto, a senior professor of climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. “Whether it will become a very common occurrence or whether it remains relatively uncommon is in our hands and is determined by when and at what average global temperature we reach zero.”
Forest fires in France, Greece
Extreme heat also boiled other parts of Europe. In Paris, the thermometer of the oldest weather station in the French capital, inaugurated in 1873, exceeded 40 degrees Celsius only for the third time. The 40.5 C measured there by the weather service Météo-France on Tuesday was the second highest reading of the station, surpassed only by about 42.6 C in July 2019.
Drought and heat waves linked to climate change have also made forest fires more common and more difficult to fight.
In the Gironde region of southwestern France, fierce forest fires spread through dry pine forests such as scab, thwarting efforts to extinguish more than 2,000 firefighters and water-bombing aircraft.
A firefighter is working this Tuesday to extinguish a forest fire in Louchats, in the west of France. (Romain Perrocheau / AFP / Getty Images)
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from homes and summer vacation sites since the fires broke out on July 12, Gironde authorities said.
A third smaller fire broke out on Monday afternoon in the Medoc wine region north of Bordeaux, which further fueled firefighting resources. Five campsites caught fire in the beach area of the Atlantic coast, where flames wreaked havoc around the Arcachon sea basin, famous for its oysters and resorts.
In Greece, a large forest fire broke out in northeastern Athens, fueled by strong winds. Firefighters said nine fire planes and four helicopters were deployed to try to prevent the flames from reaching inhabited areas on the slopes of Mount Penteli, about 25 kilometers northeast of the capital. The smoke from the fire covered part of the city skyline.
But weather forecasts offered some consolation, with heat wave temperatures expected to drop along the Atlantic coast on Tuesday and the possibility of rain reaching the end of the day.