LONDON — “BRITAIN IS MELTING,” one front page here read Tuesday, as record heat and raging wildfires in France and Spain brought the toll of extreme temperatures up close for many Europeans.
Europe sizzles in record heat wave as thousands flee wildfires
A provisional temperature of 102.38 degrees (39.1 Celsius) was recorded as the country, which has declared a national emergency, braces for 106 degrees (41 Celsius), well above the 2019 record of 101.7 degrees (38.7 Celsius).
“Earth sends a warning,” another British headline read — a nod to the warnings from scientists of the challenge that climate change poses to daily life.
Rail temperatures threatened to break the tracks, suspending train traffic. And London’s ambulance service prepared for an uptick in emergency calls for fainting and heat exposure.
Experts pointed to the role of human-influenced climate change as thousands of people were forced out of their homes because of wildfires in Spain and France.
In Spain, as wildfires scorched tens of thousands of hectares of land, footage showed one man emerging from a billowing blaze. He ran through a field from the yellow flames that engulfed his excavator in the Zamora province, where thousands of people have fled dozens of villages.
Train services were suspended Tuesday between the capital, Madrid, and Galicia to the northwest because of a fire close to the tracks, transportation authorities said.
In southwest France, wildfires that have destroyed at least 19,000 hectares were still raging in Gironde early Tuesday after more firefighters were dispatched to region on the west coast, which is lined with popular beaches and vacation spots. Authorities said about 37,000 people had evacuated their homes over the past week.
Towns and cities on the Atlantic coast got some respite early Tuesday, when a cool oceanic air mass arrived from the west overnight. The French meteorological agency lifted the “red” alert level on 15 areas and said the atmosphere was becoming “much more breathable.”
Still, “the heat wave is shifting to the east of the country,” the Meteo-France agency added, and 70 other regions in the country remained under an “orange” heat alert level. Maximum temperatures were expected to reach 95 to 104 degrees (35 to 40 Celsius).
The record temperatures in Britain sparked calls for action on climate change. “The likelihood of exceeding 40°C anywhere in the UK in a given year has been rapidly increasing,” according to Nikos Christidis, climate attribution scientist at the Met Office, the U.K. Weather Service — which described the hot spell as “historic.”
At a climate meeting in Berlin on Monday, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a remote address that world leaders faced a stark choice on climate change: “Collective action or collective suicide,” he told government representatives. “It is in our hands.”
Timsit reported from Paris.
Source: WP
