Why Europe is getting so hot
Europe is sweltering under extreme heat that has broken records and claimed lives. Why is the continent heating so fast? Much of Western Europe is
Europe is sweltering under extreme heat that has broken records and claimed lives. Why is the continent heating so fast? Much of Western Europe is suffering through an intense spring heat wave, with unusually hot temperatures from the UK and Ireland in the north, through Germany and France and all the way down into Spain and Italy. The unseasonable spring weather is the result of a "heat dome." This strong, slow-moving high-pressure atmospheric system from northern Africa is trapping hot air over Europe, much like a lid on a boiling pot of water. Such weather systems have become more common in Europe over the 25 years, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, fueling more frequent and extreme heat waves. Why Europe is already experiencing record heat waves To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video "Temperatures on this scale were once exceptional even at the height of summer," said Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, in a statement. "This record-breaking heat has the fingerprints of climate change all over it." Europe warming twice as fast It's too soon to know how much this latest extreme heat event was supercharged by the greenhouse effect from fossil fuel emissions. But previous analyses of more than half a dozen heat waves in Europe since 2003 conducted by climate scientists at the UK-based World Weather Attribution, which Otto co-founded, show the extreme weather was "much more likely and more intense due to human-induced climate change." The latest European State of the Climate report, released in April, noted that at least 95% of the continent experienced above-average annual temperatures in 2025.
Intense heat waves above 30 Celsius were felt as far north as the Arctic Circle, and sea surface temperature was the "highest on record." "Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and the impacts are already severe," said Florian Pappenberger, head of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, one of the agencies behind the report. In fact, Europe is heating twice as fast as the global average. The average temperature has risen by 2.5 Celsius (4.3 Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial levels of the late 19th century. Worldwide, analysts have recorded an average increase of 1.4 Celsius. Why is it getting this hot? That accelerated warming is due, in part, to location. Europe is connected to the Arctic, the only other place in the world that is warming even faster. The average temperature increase up around the North Pole has already exceeded 3.3 C, according to data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. In part because the darker, ice-free Arctic Ocean absorbs more sunlight than ice, which reflects it. That process, known as the albedo effect, is also in play across Europe. Areas of the continent that were once frozen year-round or late into the summer, such as the high-altitude regions of the Alps, are now increasingly snow-free. With the darker ground reflecting less solar radiation back into space, warming has accelerated. Wavering winds shifting weather patterns Scientists have also linked warming in Europe to the shifting winds of the jet stream, the high-altitude river of wind flowing toward Europe from the west.
The BriefWire