Is the last summer in Europe unusual? What science says | Weather

It’s hot in Europe hit a new high This summer, it’s the scorching early summer heat that’s causing disease, death and structural collapse across the region.

Traffic was suspended on Sunday as temperatures reached 40C (104F) across Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. In France, days of average temperatures of 29.8C (85.6F) – rising to 44C (111.2F) in one town – followed the storm, which left nearly 1,000 people dead.

Events like this may be new.

Last summer’s heat wave alone caused nearly 2,300 weather-related deaths in 12 European countries, WWA says.

Research done by World Weather Attribution (WWA) has found that extreme temperatures at this level are now significantly higher than they were in 2003, and were unheard of 50 years ago.

Dr Hans Kluge, who is the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) for Europe, warned: “Deaths due to heat will continue to be a part of Europe’s hot climate. Deaths have already increased by about 52 million per year since the 1990s, he told Al Jazeera – which he says shows little change.”

So what does this mean for the future? Is this temperature abnormal, and if so, why?

We asked meteorologists:

Is this a new innovation?

Yes, it seems so. According to PAHsThe heat wave was about 3.5C cooler in June 1976, and 2C cooler even in 2003.

“Think of this as a race where the starting line has been moved very close to the finish line,” Dr Akshay Deoras of the University of Reading told Al Jazeera. Ultimately, this has to do with global warming, he says.

Europe has warmed almost twice as much as the rest of the world since the 1980s, according to the European Commission’s climate change programme, Copernicus.

Deoras says this is akin to “rolling the dice” to an unprecedented level.

WWA’s projections go further: at current emission rates, this summer’s warming growth event is expected to occur every few decades – and today’s climate is a projection of what a typical summer could look like by mid-century.

Why is this happening in Europe now?

The immediate trigger is a suspended surface system, or “heat dome”, which holds the heat in one fixed area for days or weeks.

Home heating is not new, but the basics that have already been changed in Europe mean that the same features are now producing much hotter results than decades ago, Deoras told Al Jazeera.

Professor Hannah Cloke from the University of Reading told Al Jazeera that it is because the warming of the new, more dangerous climate comes from emissions that were released decades ago, and the climate takes time to respond – so we are feeling the effects of past pollution.

Copernicus European State of the Climate 2025 report confirms this: more than 95 percent of the world’s population experienced extreme temperatures last year, including the loss of alpine glaciers and the highest sea surface temperatures in all of Europe.

And because Europe is warming twice as much as the rest of the world, the same global warming gap is expected to widen – meaning whatever the world faces in the coming decades, Europe will likely see it first, and the worst.

Is this method irreversible?

A little bit. Some of the damage is permanent. Some of them aren’t – yet.

Take some ice. Because the effects of pollution from decades ago are increasing, “some of what we’re experiencing this summer is already closed”, says Cloke.

The Alpine glaciers, which feed Europe’s major rivers, are said to have already recovered, and their contribution to the flow of summer rivers has been “permanently reduced”.

Not everything is set in stone, however. “Every ton of emissions avoids changing what’s coming,” says Cloke.

What we do now, will decide the difference between a summer that is difficult to have in the future, and a summer that is “too much to bear”.

Some resources, such as groundwater in northern Europe, can recover – “but the window to do so shrinks with each dry year”, he says.

What does this do to human health?

This threat is already serious and is bound to get worse.

Lancet Countdown Europe they calculate that there were 62,000 heat-related deaths across the region in 2024 alone, which points to another rise by 2050 if we do not change.

The main problem, Kluge told Al Jazeera, is infrastructure and has not been addressed.

“Many buildings in this area are designed to be very cold – to keep heat in, not lose it,” he said, warning that without major renovations, deaths could rise until 2050 regardless of how the warnings are implemented.

His advice: take care of the heat if possible, not suddenly.

“Governments should prepare for heat the same way they prepare for winter flu — as a recurring, predictable problem that requires permanent infrastructure, not a one-off problem that requires emergency repairs.” The way to get the most out of it, he added, is to identify who is at risk — often older people who live alone — and reach out to them before the heat sets in, not after.

What else can happen?

Cloke points to two key issues: early warning systems that reliably reach people in need of protection, and the repair of water damage in Europe that has been built up due to non-existent rains.

Deoras says the climate remains important: cutting them will not stop the warming, which is “a natural part of the climate”, but it will make them “smaller, smaller and shorter”.

None of the experts who spoke to Al Jazeera described this as pessimistic.

They warn that the chances of solving the problem are decreasing: the damage can be restored, the emissions can be reduced, the warning systems can be repaired – if the decisions are made now, not after the next heat wave.

What a “normal” European summer will look like in 2050 is still being written, they say.