Photo by Mattias Russo-Larsson on Unsplash
This week, Europe experienced one of the most intense heatwaves in its extensive history. An anticyclone, an area of high pressure named Cerberus, after the three-headed hound of Hades, hung over the continent, driving temperatures to record highs. Italy experienced temperatures as high as 40C (104F), France reached 39C (102F), and according to satellite data, parts of Spain reached an astonishing 60C (140F). At face value, this might seem like a one-off extreme weather event, but this is set to become the new normal thanks to climate change. In fact, it looks like European summers will soon butt up against the limits of human habitability. Let me explain.
To understand all of this, we have to start at the beginning, with global warming. You see, it wasn’t just Cerberus driving this heatwave, as the entire planet is currently experiencing unprecedented heat thanks to human-driven climate change.
The annual average global temperature for 2022 was 14.75C (58.55F), which is 1.06C (1.90F) warmer than pre-industrial times. While this might not sound like a lot, remember that it is an annualised average, so in the summer, we feel more than a 1.06C increase in temperatures. This is one of the many reasons why the first week of July 2023 was possibly one of the warmest weeks ever recorded for the planet. The global average temperature was 17.24C on the 7th of July! That is nearly 2 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average for July.
Sadly, Europe is unlucky enough to have a high-temperature system hovering over it (Cerberus) during this record heat, sending its temperatures even higher!
So, that’s the cause behind the current extreme heat gripping Europe. But, as I am about to show you, it is but a taste of what is to come.
We have known for a while that global warming affects different parts of the globe in different ways, with some areas experiencing dramatic temperature increases and others less so. This is why Europe is currently the fastest-warming continent on the planet, warming twice as fast as the global average for the last four decades, and according to recent reports, that trend is set to continue for…
