Western Europe Records Hottest June in History

Western Europe has recorded the hottest June in the history of measurements, according to the European Union’s climate service Copernicus.

Globally, only June 2024 was warmer.

Copernicus states that this demonstrates how significantly the climate is changing, and that oceans around the world are warmer than ever before.

These records show that the climate system continues to accumulate heat, leading to increasingly intense heatwaves, prolonged warm oceans, and growing risks for people, ecosystems, and infrastructure across Europe and the world.

This June was 1.39 degrees Celsius warmer than the estimated average from the pre-industrial period of 1850 to 1900.

Western Europe is facing its third heatwave in the past six weeks, and drought is helping small fires turn into uncontrollable blazes, writes The Guardian.

Copernicus assessed that increasingly frequent and successive heatwaves show that extreme heat is becoming a more serious problem and challenge.

Large fires in recent days have destroyed vast areas of southern Europe, prompting the European Union to deploy additional firefighters and firefighting planes to assist national services overwhelmed by simultaneous blazes. Data published on Tuesday show that fires in the EU have burned 56 percent more land than usual.

The area affected by fires in France is four times larger than the average for this period of the year—35,400 hectares have burned, while in Spain 55,128 hectares have burned, which is twice the average, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System.

Barcelona set a new temperature record on Wednesday with 40.5 degrees Celsius, Spanish meteorologists reported, while in France a 22-year-old firefighter died during an intervention on a fire in the Alps, according to the French Ministry of the Interior.

In the United Kingdom, where scientists from the Meteorological Office have warned of an „extreme“ marine heatwave, temperatures are expected to reach 34 degrees Celsius today. Although they will be somewhat lower than during the record-hot June, the period of high temperatures could last about ten days.