Extreme heat scorches Europe, world

ROME, Italy - Swathes of Europe baked Tuesday in a heatwave trailed by wildfires and health warnings, as parts of Asia and the United States also suffered under extreme weather.

Firefighters battled blazes in parts of Greece and the Canary Islands and Spain issued heat alerts, while some children in Italy's Sardinia were warned away from sports for safety reasons.

In the United States, the city of Phoenix broke a 49-year-old record with its 19th consecutive day of temperatures of 43.3 Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) or higher, weather officials said.

"You can't be in the street, it's horrible," said Lidia Rodriguez, 27, in Madrid.

From the Washington to Beijing, authorities have warned in recent days of the health dangers of the extreme heat, urging people to drink water and shelter from the sun.

Several local temperature records were broken in southern France, the weather service there said.

Meteo France said a record 29.5 C (85 F) had been reached in the Alpine ski resort of Alpe d'Huez, which sits at an altitude of 1,860 metres (6,100 ft), while 40.6 C (105F) had been recorded for the first time in Verdun in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

In a stark reminder of the effects of global warming, the UN's World Meteorological Agency (WMO) said the trend of heatwaves "shows no signs of decreasing".

"These events will continue to grow in intensity, and the world needs to prepare for more intense heatwaves," John Nairn, a senior extreme heat advisor at the WMO told reporters in Geneva.

Wildfires and scorching heat

Northwest of the Greek capital Athens, columns of smoke loomed over the forest of Dervenohoria, where one of several fires around the capital and beyond was still burning.

Still burning was a forest fire by the seaside resort of Loutraki, where the mayor said 1,200 children had been evacuated Monday from holiday camps.

In the Canary Islands, some 400 firefighters battled a blaze that has ravaged 3,500 hectares of forest and forced 4,000 residents to evacuate, with authorities warning residents to wear face masks outside due to poor air quality.

Temperatures were unforgiving in Italy and in Spain, where three regions were put under hot weather red alerts.

The Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily have been on watch to possibly surpass a continent-wide record of 48.8C (nearly 120F), recorded in Sicily in August 2021.

At Lanusei, near Sardinia's eastern coast, a children's summer camp was restricting beach visits to the early morning and forbidding sports, teacher Morgana Cucca told AFP.

In the Sardinian capital of Cagliari, pharmacist Teresa Angioni said patients were complaining of heat-related symptoms.

"They mainly buy magnesium and potassium supplements and ask us to measure their blood pressure, which is often low," Angioni said.

Many throughout Italy sought escape by the sea, including outside Rome, where the midday heat hit 40C (104F).

"Certainly it's better at the beach, you can at least get a little wind from the sea. It's not even possible to remain in the city, too hot," said Virginia Cesario, 30, at the Focene beach near the capital.

Climate change impact

Tens of millions of Americans experienced dangerous heat levels on Tuesday.

In the town of San Angelo, Texas, where temperatures were expected to reach 104-108F (40-42C), the National Weather Service said it was "running out of ways to say that it's gonna be hot out there today."

"With temperatures across the area likely topping the 105 mark yet again, we implore you to continue to practice heat safety and try to stay as cool," the agency said on Twitter.

And in Arizona, the mercury at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport again reached 110F on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 18 consecutive days at or above that temperature, set in 1974.

The heat waves across Europe and the globe are "not one single phenomenon but several acting at the same time," said Robert Vautard, director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace climate institute.

"But they are all strengthened by one factor: climate change."

Heat record in China

In parts of Asia, record temperatures have triggered torrential rain.

Nearly 260,000 people were evacuated in southern China and Vietnam before a typhoon made landfall late Monday, bringing fierce winds and rain but  weakening to a tropical storm by Tuesday.

The record-setting heat came as US climate envoy John Kerry met with Chinese officials in Beijing, as the world's two largest polluters revive stalled diplomacy on reducing planet-warming emissions.

Speaking Tuesday at Beijing's Great Hall of the People with China's top diplomat Wang Yi, Kerry called for "global leadership" on climate issues.

Agence France-Presse

Europe burns as heatwave breaks temperature records

LONDON — A fierce heatwave in western Europe has left much of the continent wilting under a scorching sun, feeding ferocious wildfires and threatening to smash more temperature records on Tuesday.

In Britain, forecasters said the current national record of 38.7 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) could be broken and 40C breached for the first time, with experts blaming climate change and predicting more frequent extreme weather to come.

On Monday the 38.1C recorded in Suffolk, in eastern England, made it the hottest day of the year and the third-hottest day on record.

Across the Channel in France, the national weather office said a host of towns and cities recorded their highest-ever temperatures on Monday.

The mercury hit 39.3C in Brest on the Atlantic coast of Brittany, in the far northwest of the country, smashing a previous record of 35.1C from 2002.

Saint-Brieuc, on the Channel coast, hit 39.5C beating a previous record of 38.1C, and the western city of Nantes recorded 42C, beating a decades-old high of 40.3C, set in 1949.

Firefighters in France's southwest were still struggling in the crushing heat to contain two massive fires that have caused widespread destruction.

For nearly a week now, armies of firefighters and a fleet of waterbombing aircraft have battled blazes that have mobilized much of France's firefighting capacity.

HOLIDAYMAKERS EVACUATED

Ireland saw temperatures of 33C in Dublin -- the highest since 1887 -- while in the Netherlands, temperatures reached 35.4C in the southern city of Westdorpe. Although that was not a record, higher temperatures are expected there on Tuesday.

Neighbouring Belgium also expected temperatures of 40C and over.

The European heatwave is the second to engulf parts of the southwest of the continent in recent weeks.

European Commission researchers, meanwhile, said nearly half (46 percent) of EU territory was exposed to warning-level drought. Eleven percent was at an alert level, and crops were already suffering from a lack of water.

Blazes in France, Greece, Portugal, and Spain have destroyed thousands of hectares of land.

An area nine kilometers (5.5 miles) long and eight kilometers wide was still ablaze near France's Dune de Pilat, Europe's highest sand dune, turning picturesque landscapes, popular campsites, and pristine beaches into a scorching mess.

The blaze was literally "blowing things up", such was its ferocity, said Marc Vermeulen, head of the local fire service. "Pine trunks of 40 years are bursting."

A total of 8,000 people were being evacuated from near the dune Monday as a precaution, as changing winds blew thick smoke into residential areas, officials said.

Hurriedly packing her car, Patricia Monteil said she would go to her daughter's home in another part of the district. "But if that goes up in flames too, I don't know what to do."

Around 32,000 tourists or residents have been forced to decamp in France, many to emergency shelters.

On Monday evening, prosecutors in the southwest city of Bordeaux said a man suspected of having started one of the fires in the region had been taken into custody.

The two fires in the region have destroyed nearly 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of land.

At Avigon, in the southeast, a fire that first started last Thursday surged back to life on Monday, local firefighters reported, while a separate fire broke out up in the northwest, in Brittany.

In Spain, a fire burning in the northwestern province of Zamora claimed the life of a 69-year-old shepherd, regional authorities said. On Sunday, a fireman died in the same area.

Later on Monday it was reported an office worker in his fifties had died from heatstroke in Madrid.

Authorities have reported around 20 wildfires still raging from the south to Galicia in the far northwest, where blazes have destroyed around 4,500 hectares of land. 

'ENJOY THE SUNSHINE'

The fires in Portugal claimed two more lives in the northern Vila Real region, after a car carrying two local villagers crashed off the road as they appeared to be trying to flee a fire zone, local officials said.

"We found the car and these two people, aged around 70 years, completely burnt," the mayor of Murca, Mario Artur Lopez, told SIC Noticias television. The victims were from the nearby village of Penabeice, he added.

Almost the entire country has been on high alert for wildfires despite a slight drop in temperatures, which last Thursday hit 47C -- a record for July.

The fires have already killed two other people, injured around 60 and destroyed between 12,000 and 15,000 hectares of land there.

In Britain, the government, already on the ropes after a series of scandals that forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to quit, has been accused of taking the situation too lightly.

Johnson was criticized for failing to attend an emergency meeting on the crisis on Sunday, instead hosting a farewell party at his state-funded country retreat.

And medics condemned comments by Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who appeared to minimize the threat from the extreme heat when he told Britons to "enjoy the sunshine".

The Sun tabloid headlined its coverage of the heat "British Bake Off", observing that the "scorcher" was making the UK hotter than Ibiza, where temperatures were a comparatively low 30C.

The extreme temperatures saw flights suspended at Luton Airport near London and at Royal Air Force base Brize Norton due to "defects" on the runway, with no let-up expected for Tuesday.

Trains were canceled and schools closed in affected areas.

In Brighton, on England's south coast, bank worker Abu Bakr put the heatwave in perspective.

"I come from Sudan," he said. "Forty, forty-five degrees is just the norm. This is as good as it can be."

Agence France-Presse