Scorching heat on three continents

Power plants are running at full capacity in the United States and China, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, struggling to meet demand for air conditioning. Wildfires are raging across southern Europe and Canada, with more than a month of fire season remaining. Explosive thunderstorms, torrential monsoons and extreme heat are wreaking havoc and threatening lives on three continents.

And there’s little respite in sight, whether it’s the mountains and megacities of Asia, the lakes and rivers of Europe, or the plains, forests and suburbs of North America. In the short term, meteorologists predict more intense heat and extreme weather over the next month.

In the long term, scientists say, climate change is making heat waves hotter, more frequent and longer, wildfires bigger and more intense. They affect air quality, rainfall and droughts, reaching every corner of the world – and increasing with human use of fossil fuels.

Danger in Europe

“The hardest part is not over,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriákos Mitsotakis said on Thursday. In his country, fires have destroyed dozens of homes and thousands of hectares of forest over the past week, and temperatures are expected to reach 45C on Sunday in the central region of Thessaly.

A fire department spokesman, Ioannis Artopios, said the intensely dry heat was creating “even more difficult” conditions for Greek firefighters. Similar drought conditions fueled Canada’s record fire season, where more than 10 million hectares were burned.

As the heat is expected to persist, parts of southern Europe are bracing for the next wave, even though temperatures have dropped – albeit slightly – over the past two days.

Italian hospitals have reported an increase in heat-related emergencies as temperatures approach 38C. Unions, civil servants and business people have come together to discuss how to protect workers from the heat, which creates dangerous conditions on construction sites, on tarmacs and on city streets.

A business leader has compared the impact of heat on workers to the COVID-19 pandemic and called for “extraordinary measures” to deal with it.

In Spain, authorities officially declared the end of the state of emergency linked to extreme heat on Thursday. However, the National Weather Service has urged people not to “let their guard down” as the risk of wildfires in hot, dry conditions remains high across much of the country.

Across Europe, scorching temperatures have particularly affected the elderly. Southern European countries have been joined by others, as far away as Belgium, which have put in place heat plans, many aimed at protecting older populations.

Extreme heat can be dangerous for anyone, but the elderly and outdoor workers are particularly at risk. According to a recent study, heat waves that hit Europe last year may have caused the death of 61,000 people on the continent.

Some health officials around the world have started linking the deaths to this year’s extreme heat. The heat and humidity have been particularly devastating in northern Mexico, where more than 100 people have died of heat-related causes this year, according to reports from the federal health ministry.

Stifling heat despite the rains in China

In Asia, extremely high temperatures have accompanied an intense monsoon season that has already claimed more than 100 lives in India, South Korea and Japan.

In India, intense heat has been replaced by heavy rainfall across much of the country, particularly in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. These torrential rains have caused major landslides and flash floods, killing at least 130 people in the past 26 days in northern India.

Much of China continued to bake on Friday as the heat wave broke records across the country.

The Xinjiang region, in the far west of the country, was particularly affected. On Sunday, in a remote desert town, temperatures reached 52°C, breaking the record for the highest temperature in China. According to state media, parts of Xinjiang are expected to continue to experience temperatures above 37C. Authorities also said they were on high alert for severe weather, including possible wildfires in the north of the region.

The end of July is historically the hottest time of the year in southern China, and authorities have warned that high humidity will make temperatures appear nearly 11 degrees higher than they actually are.

China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, entered its dry season on Thursday, the earliest start to the season since records began in the 1950s, according to authorities in Jiangxi province. They cited the persistent heat, as well as the lack of rainfall, as the reason for the alarming drop in water levels.

In northern China, several cities, including Beijing, broke the record for the most days in a year when the temperature exceeded 35°C. The showers that started falling on Thursday evening should finally bring some respite.

But thunderstorms have brought their share of concerns, with authorities warning of the risk of flash flooding around the capital. Two years ago, on July 20, 2021, the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou suffered the country’s heaviest one-hour rainfall, according to state media, as downpours killed at least 300 people.

Breakdowns

Chinese power plants have recently broken their own electricity generation records – by burning more coal, a major contributor to global warming, to meet energy demand for air conditioning. Chinese leaders this week rebuffed a U.S. offer to pledge tougher action to tackle climate change.

Electricity demand has been similar in the United States, where more than a quarter of the population experienced dangerous heat on Thursday, according to an analysis by the New York Times covering daily weather and demographic data.

Late Thursday afternoon, the Californian electricity grid operator issued an emergency alert urging people to save electricity, as high temperatures put the system to the test. In Phoenix, the temperature topped 46°C on Thursday, extending the record of 21 straight days with temperatures of 110 degrees or higher.

Severe storms, particularly in the southeastern United States, further challenged the energy grid. Hundreds of thousands of people were without power after severe thunderstorms damaged power lines on Thursday, knocking out power to 150,000 homes in Georgia and West Tennessee, and causing outages in 52,000 homes and businesses.

Forecasters said the current heat wave is expected to last through the weekend in the southern United States and Southeast and into next week in the Southwest. Nearly 80 million Americans are expected to face temperatures above 40°C in the coming days, according to the National Weather Service.

Another US agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has predicted unusually high temperatures for most of the country next month, almost everywhere except the northern Great Plains. On Thursday, NOAA said last month was the hottest June on the planet since recording global temperatures began in 1850.

This article was first published in the New York Times.