A continent under heat stress: why is Europe warming faster than the rest of the world?

What was considered an exception only a few decades ago is increasingly becoming the rule today; summers in Europe are not only getting hotter, but also longer, drier and more dangerous. According to the European service Copernicus, which monitors the climate, Europe is the continent that is warming fastest, with temperatures there rising about twice as fast as the global average. Particularly affected is the Mediterranean, where thermometers in many cities increasingly show over 40 degrees, while so-called tropical nights, in which the temperature does not fall below 20 degrees, have long since become part of everyday life. What statistics describe in the abstract, millions of people feel first-hand every summer.

The persistent heat, combined with increasingly severe droughts, creates almost ideal conditions for wildfires, which destroy huge areas in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy every summer. The fire that raged in 2023 in the region of Evros, in the north-east of Greece, is considered the largest forest fire that has ever been recorded in the European Union. Fires not only destroy ecosystems that have formed over centuries, but also threaten settlements, infrastructure and human lives, and the costs of firefighting and reconstruction are rising from year to year. No less serious are the consequences of drought for agriculture; when harvests fail, not only farmers suffer, but also consumers, as food prices rise. In some regions of Spain and Italy, the authorities have even had to restrict the water supply in recent years.

Heatwaves also pose a serious risk to public health, especially for older people, young children and the chronically ill, whose bodies regulate body temperature less easily. When it does not cool down even at night, the body does not recover, which additionally strains the heart and circulation. According to researchers' estimates, in the summer of 2022 alone more than 60,000 people died in Europe as a result of the heat, which shows that many countries are still not sufficiently prepared. After the catastrophic heatwave of 2003, in which thousands of people died, France introduced a national early warning system, which today serves as a model for other countries too.

In cities the problem is further exacerbated by the so-called urban heat island effect, since asphalt and concrete absorb heat during the day and release it only at night. That is why cities across Europe are experimenting with various adaptation measures, from planting trees and creating new parks to white roofs that reflect sunlight. In Barcelona, for example, schools, libraries and other public buildings are turned into climate shelters during heatwaves, where people can take refuge from the heat. Critics nevertheless warn that such measures, however useful they may be, only ease the symptoms and do not remove the cause of the problem.

In the scientific community there is hardly any doubt that the main cause of this trend is man-made climate change. Through the burning of coal, oil and gas huge amounts of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, which trap heat and thus increase the likelihood of extreme weather events. Climate models show that summers like those of recent years, if emissions do not fall drastically, could become the norm as early as the middle of the century. That is precisely why researchers stress that adaptation, though essential, is no substitute for climate protection, but must go hand in hand with it. The European Union has set itself the goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2050, but whether this ambitious promise will be kept will depend above all on how consistently the member states implement the agreed measures.