Europe’s heatwave is the hottest and most humid ever

[SteamyTea]

Environment

Europe’s heatwave is the hottest and most humid ever

The current temperatures in western and central Europe would have been virtually impossible 50 years ago, and unprecedented humidity levels make this heatwave especially dangerous

Alec Luhn26 June 2026, updated 29 June 2026

Extreme heat was felt across much of Europe on 24 June

Sylvie HUSSON/AFP via Getty Images

This week’s heatwave is the hottest ever recorded in Europe, as well as the most humid, and it is likely to cause thousands of deaths.

Although a potential “super El Niño” is forming in the Pacific Ocean, this didn’t play a role in the heatwave, a study by the World Weather Attribution network of scientists has found. Instead, global warming is clearly to blame.

The study analysed how likely the average daily maximum temperature projected for 26 to 28 June in western and central Europe would have been in the cooler climates of 1976 and of 2003.

While the weather pattern – a low-pressure heat dome that is trapping hot air from the south – isn’t unusual, the temperatures are. Fifty years ago, a typical June heatwave would have been about 3.5°C cooler, and the temperatures seen over the next three days would have been a less-than-one-in-10,000-year occurrence.

Daytime temperatures have exceeded 44°C  (111°F) in one French town, and nighttime temperatures have remained above 30°C (86°F) in parts of Spain.

“This event would not have been possible in June without climate change,” Theodore Keeping at Imperial College London said at a media briefing on 25 June. “The three-day nighttime temperatures would not have been possible at any time of year without climate change.”

The humidity has also been unprecedented, reaching more than 50 per cent in many British cities. Dew-point temperatures have been in the low 20s, as compared to the single digits during the July 2022 heatwave that set the UK’s temperature record.

The wet-bulb globe temperature, which measures not just air temperature but also humidity, heat radiation and air movement, has broken or is expected to break records in almost half of European cities, the study found.

Humidity amplifies health risks because it slows evaporation, making sweating less effective. While older people or those who have a chronic illness are in particular danger, so are migrants and people experiencing homelessness.

“What we see very clearly… is how unequal the effects of this heatwave are and how that really demonstrates the inequality that widens due to climate change,” said Friederike Otto, also at Imperial College London. “Because it’s of course people who are particularly vulnerable who are most likely to lose their lives.”

While it is too soon to look at excess mortality, a previous study found a smaller heatwave in June and July 2025 killed 2300 people in London and 11 other European cities.

“The health impacts of this heatwave are likely to be extremely high across large parts of northern and central Europe,” said Keeping.

Heatwaves will become even more intense and frequent unless we rapidly cut fossil fuel emissions, the researchers stressed. And Europe, the fastest warming continent, is not ready, as it has an ageing, urban population living in cities built for a cooler era. In the UK, only 5 per cent of homes have air conditioning.

Besides AC, Europe should invest in passive cooling like building insulation, ventilation, green roofs and walls and trees along streets, they said. It should also expand its heat response to include oft-forgotten groups like people with mental health conditions and those who are pregnant, said Carolina Pereira Marghidan at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

“Europe has heat action plans, but research has also shown that sometimes they do not cover all the groups that may be vulnerable,” she said.

[MikeGrahamT21]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

While the weather pattern – a low-pressure heat dome that is trapping hot air from the south – isn’t unusual, the temperatures are. Fifty years ago, a typical June heatwave would have been about 3.5°C cooler, and the temperatures seen over the next three days would have been a less-than-one-in-10,000-year occurrence.

 

Have they got that wrong? I thought it was a high pressure heat dome? Pushing the hot air down on us.

 

Buckle up, theres another possible mid July!

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, MikeGrahamT21 said:

Have they got that wrong

Not sure, but down here, on 24/06/2026, the temperature was at its peak at 33.7°C (very good for here), the air pressure was 1017.71 hPa, which is not exceptionally high.  It was about the same the week before, but the temperature was 10°C lower (18.6°C peak).

[Spinny]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

While it is too soon to look at excess mortality, a previous study found a smaller heatwave in June and July 2025 killed 2300 people in London and 11 other European cities.

isn’t interesting how the fear mongers work. If they were honest they would cite percentage changes, not absolute numbers. The fact they do not shows them as propagandists.

let us look as it in context. London is 8 Million people, so 11 major cities could be what 50 Million people. Maybe 1600 deaths every day. So over 2 months 100k deaths. They claim just a 2.5% increase in deaths. Of course overwhelmingly old people dying days weeks or months sooner than they otherwise would.

what a tangled web they weave in order to deceive.

[saveasteading]

13 minutes ago, Spinny said:

overwhelmingly old people dying days weeks or months sooner than they otherwise would.

 

That's extremely ageist as well as incorrect.

 

Many of these persons at risk would have years ahead otherwise.

I could explain but I don't think you want that.

Good luck with your circulation in the years to come.

 

13 minutes ago, Spinny said:

how the fear mongers work

You seem to be troubled, but this isn't the appropriate  conversation, or help forum.

Stay cool. 😎 

[ToughButterCup]

Language matters. Reading it with care matters more.  Thats why any text should be read with  polite, respectful scepticism.

 

Hardest of all is reading ones own words with the same detachment.

[JohnMo]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

24/06/2026, the temperature was at its peak at 33.7°C

We peaked at 26.4°C, in NE Scotland - different world temperature wise.

 

[MikeGrahamT21]

We hit 36.5C here in South Yorkshire on the 26th, the humidity was an absolute nightmare, glad of the cooler weather now but it seems the next heatwave is just round the corner 😭😭

[SimonD]

6 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

44°C 

I was driving through France twice last week and on one of the journeys the exterior temperature was shown as 41C - the a/c in the van couldn't cope and it was just getting hotter and hotter inside but it was a shock to the system to get out on a quick break.

[Spinny]

7 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

While older people or those who have a chronic illness are in particular danger, so are migrants and people experiencing homelessness.

 

3 hours ago, saveasteading said:

That's extremely ageist as well as incorrect.

 

To say the elderly account for the overwhelming majority of death is erm 'ageist'.

Is to say the overwhelming majority of olympic sprinters are black 'racist' ?

Truth is truth. Truth is necessary for progress. 

We are all going to die, every 8 years our chance of death doubles. During covid idiocy ruled, in essence spending half a trillion pounds trying to stop old people dying. Will the government spend £1M trying to keep me or you alive when I'm elderly - nope not a chance - that's what they spent during covid.

 

All those young men arriving illegally on our shores that are given free accommodation, free food, free mobile phones, free health care, free legal aid - their risk from death in a heatwave that would look like a cool day in their country of origin...is a particular danger. erm.

 

Calling out the bullshit. Alec Luhn is a left wing reporter writing worthless propaganda.

[MikeGrahamT21]

10 hours ago, Spinny said:

 

 

To say the elderly account for the overwhelming majority of death is erm 'ageist'.

Is to say the overwhelming majority of olympic sprinters are black 'racist' ?

Truth is truth. Truth is necessary for progress. 

We are all going to die, every 8 years our chance of death doubles. During covid idiocy ruled, in essence spending half a trillion pounds trying to stop old people dying. Will the government spend £1M trying to keep me or you alive when I'm elderly - nope not a chance - that's what they spent during covid.

 

All those young men arriving illegally on our shores that are given free accommodation, free food, free mobile phones, free health care, free legal aid - their risk from death in a heatwave that would look like a cool day in their country of origin...is a particular danger. erm.

 

Calling out the bullshit. Alec Luhn is a left wing reporter writing worthless propaganda.

 

Have a word with yourself...

 

Yes the world is a corrupt place, and people are out for their own gain, but this type of post is why the right wing parties are edging ever closer to control.

[SteamyTea]

@Spinny

 

I am surprised at our comments considering the article came from the DMGT stable.

[Spinny]

Sensationalist headlines get clicks. Hottest Evah, wettest evah, worst storm evah. There is a decent living to be made cranking out the stories. DMGT no doubt happy to crank out anything that gets clicks. One day - we are all dommed, doomed - click,click, click. The next day - it is all a climate hoax - click, click, click.

 

Climate scientists and the IPCC officially retired the extreme worst-case emissions scenario, RCP8.5 (and its successor, SSP5-8.5), for future modeling.

What that means in practice is... most climate scare stories of recent years quietly confirmed as fish and chip paper.

[SteamyTea]

29 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Climate scientists and the IPCC officially retired the extreme worst-case emissions scenario, RCP8.5 (and its successor, SSP5-8.5), for future modeling.

What that means in practice is... most climate scare stories of recent years quietly confirmed as fish and chip paper.

Yes they did, and for very good reasons.

Basically India and China are going to burn less coal than original thought.

Unlike your opinions, scientist change their minds as new evidence appears.

[Spinny]

Some scientists tell lies and push propaganda narrative lines when they should know better...

https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/29/hottest-ever-really/

[SteamyTea]

@Spinny

You really do not understand the scientific method do you.

Have you thought of going to university and studying it for several years?

 

[saveasteading]

8 hours ago, Spinny said:

Some scientists tell lies and push propaganda narrative lines when they should know better...

 

That's the excuse of the less well informed that you are repeating.

 

The vast majority of scientists are too busy being scientists  (knowledge, analysis, complicated stuff) to get involved in politics. They are not inclined to lie or push propaganda either. 

They will also say' it isnt that simple ' unlike the worst of politicians who say what the audiene wants to hear,

 

Those who don't understand science are often disinclined to believe just how clever some other people can be.

 

If you excuse me I will exit this otherwise useful conversation:  we self builders are designing with climate  change in mid after all, and maybe become old if we can keep indoor temperatures in control.

 

7 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Have you thought of going to university and studying it for several years?

after passing some rather tricky exams at school .  It's much easier to not understand and to assume it is bluff.

[Iceverge]

18 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

 

You really do not understand the scientific method do you.

Have you thought of going to university and studying it for several years?

 

 

Does it require years in university to understand the scientific method?

 

10 hours ago, saveasteading said:

They are not inclined to lie or push propaganda either. 

 

Being human they are not immune from bias. Even if personally incorruptible, scientists are subject to the whims of political and commercial funding. 

 

What results isn't necessarily bad science, but it does skew the volumes of papers and reports published on a particular topic leading to incorrect a public perception of its relative importance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Spinny]

10 hours ago, saveasteading said:

They are not inclined to lie or push propaganda either. 

The history of science is chock full of denial, resistance, and persecution of those that question the accepted narrative of the day.

From heliocentrism, through antiseptic practices, and heliobacter pylori.

Science advances one funeral at a time.

 

Sadly climate 'science' is often what Feynman would have called 'cargo cult science'.

Models only output what you input into them - a set of assumptions and assumed relationships in a highly complex multivariate system - very few of which have ever been experimentally examined, and whose relative importance is extremely poorly understood.

 

Never underestimate the fear and resistance and lengths to which people can and do go to to protect their jobs, careers, and positions - rather than countenance what data and truth show. Anthropomorphic Climate Change is a very uncertain hypothesis but has now become a huge bandwagon with many people riding on it's back. 

 

The public perception of anthropomorphic climate change is based on propaganda media coverage and almost total underlying ignorance of the actual scientific uncertainty involved.

[SteamyTea]

21 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

Does it require years in university to understand the scientific method?

I think it does.

It was not until my third year that we covered Philosophy of Science, even though we had it drummed into us that the data shows the results, even if you don't like them for the previous 2 years.

Those two years were really leading up to how to design and manage good experiments that left little opportunity for error and ambiguity. All the theory, mathematics and statistics, previous research and, sometimes, unrelated topics (for a broader view) were just there to make our lives easier, though it did not seem it at the time.

There are bad scientists, but they tend to be caught out early on, and very really get published.

The ones that do slip though get caught out later.

 

When it comes to Climate Change Science, the old trope about the planet going into a new Ice Age is usually dragged out from the coffin.

What happened there is that rather than a binary, or absolute figure, bring out on an outcome, a number of scenarios are modelled, each scenario has a probability factor attached to it. The extremes, i.e. ice age, 12°C extra warming had very low probabilities, about 2.5% each, of happening.

What then happens is that those extremes are highlighted as an example of science being fundamentally corrupt.

The people that want to go along with that are called (expletive deleted).

[SteamyTea]

28 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Sadly climate 'science' is often what Feynman would have called 'cargo cult science'.

You really are showing your ignorance now.

He was highlighting the difference between real science (physics in his case) and social science, which tries to use scientific terms and techniques to give it credibility, but is not a science, it is opinions.

[Iceverge]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

think it does.

It was not until my third year that we covered Philosophy of Science, even though we had it drummed into us that the data shows the results, even if you don't like them for the previous 2 years.

Those two years were really leading up to how to design and manage good experiments that left little opportunity for error and ambiguity. All the theory, mathematics and statistics, previous research and, sometimes, unrelated topics (for a broader view) were just there to make our lives easier, though it did not seem it at the time.

There are bad scientists, but they tend to be caught out early on, and very really get published.

The ones that do slip though get caught out later.

 

 

To probe further, at what point are those of us without a scientific qualification allowed to access, interpret and comment on published science? 

 

 

[SimonD]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

You really are showing your ignorance now.

He was highlighting the difference between real science (physics in his case) and social science, which tries to use scientific terms and techniques to give it credibility, but is not a science, it is opinions.

I think you're flying a bit close to the wind here. You said you studied the philosophy of science? This includes epistemology and ontology - there is not just one narrow fixed definition of these, which is what you seem to be suggesting. But also the philosophy of science is about exploring the relationship between science and what we consider to be truth, and certainly not anything like that certain sciences are real - which implies they have exclusivity over what is true, which of course they don't, it would be pretty naive and ignorant to suggest they did. 😉 

I'd also suggest that being fixed about what is real, is pretty non-scientific to begin with and ignores the very important metaphysical component inherent the philosophy of science. 😉

[SteamyTea]

25 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

To probe further, at what point are those of us without a scientific qualification allowed to access, interpret and comment on published science

Quite hard to answer that.  I suppose critical thinking, and lots of reading about the subject, and the topic authors/institutions is all I can easily suggest at this stage.

 

21 minutes ago, SimonD said:

This includes epistemology and ontology - there is not just one narrow fixed definition of these, which is what you seem to be suggesting

Yes and no.  At the level of climate change, which is based on basic physics i.e. laws of thermodynamics, chemistry, atomic states, there is no need to get too deep into the philosophy.

If you can imagine, experiment, observe/measure and test, most of the mystique is removed.  No need to confuse it with Latin.

[SimonD]

18 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

At the level of climate change, which is based on basic physics i.e. laws of thermodynamics, chemistry, atomic states, there is no need to get too deep into the philosophy.

If you can imagine, experiment, observe/measure and test, most of the mystique is removed.  No need to confuse it with Latin.

No, it isn't. It's based in complexity, which physics seriously struggles with and the reductionist approach it has long held so dear really doesn't cope. This typical reductionism is exactly mirrored by your claim that it's based on basic physics and fundamental components - but the behaviours of the systems are based on their complex and dynamic relations.

But, you've also kind of proved my point - you're making a statement that one small fraction of science is true science which indicates to me a misunderstanding of the scientific method and the philosophy of science itself. Science is actually about continually questioning whether what we think as true is really true and so moving forwards and that by definition this also involves questioning the basis upon which we think we know something. That is the scientific method.