An early summer is burning the old continent.  'Crazy' temperatures hit Europe

The European continent entered a "scorching summer" early this year, accompanied by sharp and unprecedented heat spikes, in conjunction with the issuance of field reports and harsh warnings from international climate scientists and research centers confirming that the continent is facing a "new and complex climate reality" in which extreme heat waves are accelerating in terms of frequency and ferocity, which foreshadows a long season of environmental extremism that has begun to take lives before the end of spring.

Urgent UN warnings

The Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Steele, said in an official statement issued on Wednesday that the current heatwave hitting large parts of Europe is a harsh and direct reminder of the catastrophic human and economic consequences of the climate crisis.

The UN official explained that the insistence on the use of coal, oil and gas and the destruction of the global forest cover is the main driver of the exacerbation of these extreme phenomena, pointing out that other vital regions of the world, especially India and large parts of the continent of Asia, are now suffering from the same phenomenon, calling for a historic acceleration of the transition process towards clean energy.

Silent bloody bill

Statistical mortality data issued in the European Union revealed the dark and bloody face of heat waves, as medical records showed that the summer heat of 2024 alone killed a number of citizens three times more than the victims of traffic accidents, and 16 times more than the victims of murders, and more than 10,000 times the victims of terrorist operations. and

The medical reports issued by the epidemiological institutes have shown that the danger in the current wave is not limited to the digital rise in temperatures, but also in its very early timing, which surprises the biological system of human bodies before their ability to physiologically adapt to hot weather.

Parisian state of alert

The French meteorological agency "Meteoro France" recorded an exceptional temperature jump that exceeded the barrier of 37.1 degrees Celsius in the southwestern regions of the country, prompting the Parisian authorities to activate the national alert system for the first time in May since its establishment in 2004, after detecting 7 confirmed deaths due to heat stress.

"The country has historically experienced hot periods, but nothing compares to the current extremism," the French body commented. In the same context, the Spanish Meteorological Service announced its readiness to face a wave of flames approaching the 40 degrees Celsius mark this week.

Tropical Nights in London

The Met Office announced the observation of "exceptional" temperatures not recorded in decades during the month of May, as the temperature reached 34.8 degrees Celsius in Kew Gardens, west of London, followed by a suffocating "tropical night" at Kenley Air Base in which the scales did not fall below 21.3 degrees Celsius, before rising again to record 35.1 degrees Celsius.

Professor Garifalos Konstantinoudis, professor of environmental epidemiology at Imperial College London, warned that the wave has caused around 250 additional deaths in England and Wales in just 72 hours, stressing that it poses a deadly risk to the elderly, children and those with chronic diseases who lack refrigeration.

Threat to the agricultural sector

Peter Thorne, a renowned climate scientist at the University of Maynooth in Ireland, described the records set in France and Britain as "insane to the point of being unbelievable", stressing based on computer modeling that the climate crisis is primarily responsible for increasing the likelihood of these waves. In the subsistence sector, regional agricultural pressure groups in the Netherlands and the Young Farmers' Association in Spain's Aragon region have sounded the alarm after signs of a severe drought threatening strategic cereal crops with a real catastrophe as a result of the warming of Europe, the world's fastest-warming continent.

The Wildness of the "El Niño" Phenomenon

Scientific institutions and global ocean forecasting centers have warned that the return of the El Niño climate phenomenon (caused by warming the waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean) will push the planet's temperature to record levels by the end of 2026. Recent scientific publications predicted that the phenomenon would reach a moderate level this summer and reach its destructive peak by the end of the year, leading expert Peter Thorne to conclude that "Europe will witness a series of extreme strikes this summer, and we have to deal with this as our new lived reality."