Western Europe records its hottest June as heatwaves surge: EU monitor

PARIS – Western Europe in 2026 experienced its hottest June on record as a searing heatwave swept across a continent facing increasingly frequent and intense heat extremes, the EU’s climate monitor said on July 9.

The report comes as a new heatwave is battering Europe this week, following a record-breaking one in June and an unusually early spring hot spell in May.

The average temperature in western Europe reached 20.74 deg C in June, more than 3 deg C above the 1991-2020 norm, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

It broke the region’s previous record set in June 2025.

“We will see more heatwaves in a warmer world,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which operates Copernicus.

“They will be more intense and they will last longer, and they will impact more geographical areas,” Burgess told AFP.

It was the second hottest June on record for the world and for Europe as a whole, Copernicus said, as human-induced climate change continues to push temperatures higher.

Global temperatures in June were 1.39 deg C above the estimated pre-industrial average, a period covering 1850-1900, according to Copernicus.

The world’s oceans experienced their highest June temperatures on record, against a backdrop of the warming El Nino weather pattern which is developing and is forecast to strengthen in the tropical Pacific.

“We’re at a transition point where climate change is shifting from being an abstract statistical future problem that you read about in reports, to a concrete present and disruptive feature of daily life,” Burgess said.

‘Heat dome’

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, and changes in atmospheric circulation are fuelling more frequent and more intense heatwaves on the continent.

June was particularly brutal for Europe as a “heat dome” – a high-pressure system acting like a lid on a boiling pot – led to all-time and monthly temperature records in several countries.

Thousands of deaths were linked to the heatwave – mostly in France, Spain and Belgium.

More than two-thirds of Europeans – 410 million people – endured temperatures topping 35 deg C during the June 15 to June 30 heatwave, according to an AFP analysis.

The June heatwave “contributed to severe health impacts, including heat-related deaths”, Copernicus said.

High rates of humidity were one of the reasons why the June heatwave was so intense, Burgess said.

“It was extremely humid, which then meant we people didn’t get relief at night. So we had a number of tropical nights in a row,” she said.

The Mediterranean experienced its own record-breaking marine heatwave, with the continent’s Atlantic coasts also hit by hot spells, putting ecosystems at risk.

“When the sea is warm, we get less alleviation at nighttime because there’s no coolness coming from the ocean. There’s no sea breeze,” Burgess said.

Dry conditions raised drought risks in eastern Europe and contributed to wildfire activity in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, Copernicus said.

Older buildings

World Weather Attribution, a network of climate scientists, said in June that Europe’s June heatwave was the “most severe ever recorded” based on a three-day forecast of average peak temperatures over the region studied.

Such a heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change, they said.

A similar event in June 2003 would have been about 2 deg C cooler.

Burgess said Europe needs adaptation plans to cope with climate change.

“Many amazing buildings across Europe were built hundreds of years ago, and that climate no longer exists,” she said.

The world, Burgess said, needs to get to net-zero emissions from the burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible.

“Heatwaves will only get worse the more (emissions from) fossil fuel we pump into the atmosphere,” she said. AFP