Two dead in Italy as heatwave scorches much of Europe

Twen­ty-one Ital­ian cities are on the high­est alert, includ­ing Rome, Milan and Venice

Two peo­ple have died in Italy as tem­per­a­tures con­tin­ue to soar amid an intense heat­wave across Europe.

In Bologna a 47-year-old died after falling ill on a con­struc­tion site while a 70-year-old man was report­ed drowned dur­ing flash flood­ing at a tourist resort to the west of Turin.

Else­where on the con­ti­nent, tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have been evac­u­at­ed because of wild­fires in west­ern Turkey, while the top of the Eif­fel Tow­er in Paris has been closed because of the heat­wave.

Parts of Spain and Por­tu­gal record­ed their high­est ever June tem­per­a­tures, with 46C reg­is­tered at El Grana­do in south-west Spain, a day after records were bro­ken in Mora in cen­tral Por­tu­gal.

Spain’s Aemet mete­o­ro­log­i­cal agency said that sev­er­al places across the Iber­ian penin­su­la had topped 43C, but a respite in tem­per­a­tures was on its way from Thurs­day.

Night-time tem­per­a­tures record­ed overnight into Tues­day hit 28C in Seville and 27C in Barcelona.

In Turkey, res­cuers evac­u­at­ed more than 50,000 peo­ple — most­ly from the west­ern province of Izmir — as fire­fight­ers con­tin­ued to put out hun­dreds of wild­fires that had bro­ken out in recent days.

Fires have also swept through parts of Bile­cik, Hatay, Sakarya, and Man­isa provinces.

Forestry Min­is­ter Ibrahim Yumak­li said over the past three days, emer­gency teams had respond­ed to 263 wild­fires nation­wide.

In France, many cities expe­ri­enced their hottest night and day on record for June on Mon­day, but fore­cast­ers have said the heat­wave should expect to peak on Tues­day.

Cli­mate Min­is­ter Agnès Pan­nier-Runach­er called an “unprece­dent­ed” sit­u­a­tion.

For first time in five years the Paris region has acti­vat­ed a red alert, along with 15 oth­er French regions. The Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion has said 1,350 pub­lic schools will either be par­tial­ly or com­plete­ly closed on Tues­day.

A read­ing of 46.6 C (115.9F) was reg­is­tered in Mora, Por­tu­gal, about 60 miles east of Lis­bon on Sun­day. Por­tuguese weath­er offi­cials were work­ing to con­firm whether that marked a new record for June.

In Italy, the Tus­cany region has seen hos­pi­tal admis­sions rise by 20%, accord­ing to local reports. 

Ital­ians in 21 out of the 27 cities have been sub­ject­ed to the high­est heat alert and 13 regions, includ­ing Lom­bardy and Emil­ia, have been advised not to ven­ture out­side dur­ing the hottest peri­ods of the day.

In Lom­bardy, work­ing out­doors has been banned from 12:30 to 16:00 on hot days on build­ing sites, roads and farms until Sep­tem­ber.

Tem­per­a­tures in Greece have been approach­ing 40C for sev­er­al days and wild­fires hit sev­er­al coastal towns near the cap­i­tal Athens destroy­ing homes and forc­ing peo­ple to evac­u­ate.

Parts of the UK were just shy of being one of the hottest June days ever on Mon­day.

The high­est UK tem­per­a­ture of the day was record­ed at Heathrow Air­port in Lon­don at 33.1C. Mean­while, Wim­ble­don record­ed a tem­per­a­ture of 32.9C, the ten­nis tour­na­men­t’s hottest open­ing day on record.

In Ger­many, the coun­try’s mete­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vice warned that tem­per­a­tures could reach almost 38C on Tues­day and Wednes­day — fur­ther poten­tial­ly record-break­ing tem­per­a­tures.

The heat­wave low­ered lev­els in the Rhine Riv­er — a major ship­ping route — lim­it­ing the amount car­go ships can trans­port and rais­ing freight­ing costs.

Coun­tries in and around the Balka­ns have also been strug­gling with the intense heat, although tem­per­a­tures have begun to cool. Wild­fires have also been report­ed in Mon­tene­gro.

While the heat­wave is a poten­tial health issue, it is also impact­ing the envi­ron­ment. High­er tem­per­a­tures in the Adri­at­ic Sea are encour­ag­ing inva­sive species such as the poi­so­nous lion­fish, while also caus­ing fur­ther stress on alpine glac­i­ers that are already shrink­ing at record rates.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volk­er Turk, warned on Mon­day that the heat­wave high­light­ed the need for cli­mate adap­ta­tion — mov­ing away from prac­tices and ener­gy sources, such as fos­sil fuels, which are the main cause of cli­mate change.

“Ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, ris­ing seas, floods, droughts, and wild­fires threat­en our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sus­tain­able envi­ron­ment, and much more,” he told the UN’s Human Rights Coun­cil.

Heat­waves are becom­ing more com­mon due to human-caused cli­mate change, accord­ing to the UN’s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change.

Extreme hot weath­er will hap­pen more often – and become even more intense — as the plan­et con­tin­ues to warm, it has said.

Richard Allan, Pro­fes­sor of Cli­mate Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing in the UK, explained that ris­ing green­house gas lev­els are mak­ing it hard­er for the plan­et to lose excess heat.

“The warmer, thirsti­er atmos­phere is more effec­tive at dry­ing soils, mean­ing heat­waves are inten­si­fy­ing, with mod­er­ate heat events now becom­ing extreme.”