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With thermometers well above 40 degrees in Spain and Portugal, Western Europe faced a second on Tuesday exceptional heat wave in just one month, with a very worrying impact on alpine soils and glaciers.
The increase of these phenomena is directly related to global warmingaccording to scientists, as greenhouse gas emissions increase in intensity, duration and frequency.
“A new heatwave, the second this year, is spreading across Western Europe. It is currently mainly affecting Spain and Portugal, but is expected to intensify and spread,” Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the Organization. Weather.
These extreme temperatures produce “Drought” with “very, very dry soils” and with an impact on the “glaciers of the Alps, which are currently being hit hard”, he continued.
“It has been a bad season for the glaciers. And we are still in a relatively early stage of summer,” warned Nullis, just over a week after the collapse of a huge block of the Italian Marmolada glacier, weakened by global warming. a tragedy that resulted in eleven deaths.
The thermometer reads 44 degrees in Seville, Spain this Tuesday. Photo: AFP
In Spain, temperatures once again broke the 40-degree barrier in much of the country’s south and west on Tuesday, according to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which also warned of the possibility of reaching around very unusual 42 degrees in the province of Orense (Galicia, north-west).
This Tuesday will be “a hard day”, but Wednesday will be “the worst” with the activation of two red warnings: in the Guadiana and in the Sevillian countryside for temperatures up to 45 degrees, the spokesman for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), Cayetano Torres .
Europe is on fire: a new heat wave hits England, Spain, France and Portugal due to climate change
And it is that, according to Torres, it is a “very unusual” heat wave, which “is already breaking records” because, for example, the maximum temperature reached in the two heatwaves of 2021 was almost 40 degrees.
Almost all of Spain will be on alert for the heat this Wednesday, with Andalusia and Extremadura on the way red alert for temperatures up to 45 degrees in the Sevillian countryside and in the Guadiana plain.
The peak of this oppressive heatwave, the second in month after month recorded in mid-June, is expected to last in the country until Thursday. The thermometers can reach 44 degrees in some points of the Tagus and Guadalquivir valleys.
In the center of Madrid, extreme heat particularly affected vulnerable people or those who work on the street, who could not benefit from a heated office.
“It’s hell,” sighed, with sweat on her forehead, Dania Arteaga, a 43-year-old Venezuelan who was cleaning a shop window in the center of the Spanish capital.
forest fires
Powered by high temperatures, several forest fires They advanced to different parts of the country. One of them, in Extremadura (west), had already burned 2,500 hectares of vegetation.
In Portugal, the fire risk has led the authorities to close the park of Sintra, located west of Lisbon, where several buildings attract tourists from all over the world.
“Given the severity of the weather forecast until the end of the week, extreme caution is essential,” Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Monday, a day before temperatures on Tuesday plummeted above 40 degrees. country.
Always with the memory of the fires of 2017, which caused a hundred deaths, the Portuguese government declared a “state of contingency” at least until Fridayto facilitate the mobilization of emergency services and increase their skills.
As a sign of danger, a fire was reactivated on Tuesday morning which burned 2,000 hectares in Ourém (center) since Thursday and had been contained on Monday morning.
A horse drinks water on a hot street in Seville, Spain on Tuesday. Photo: AFP
The heat wave has also hit France, where temperatures are expected to reach 36 to 38 degrees in the southwest and in the Rhone River valley on Tuesday, with possible peaks of 39 degrees.
The French agency Météo France predicts a heat wave that will last at least “eight to ten days”, with its worst moments between “Saturday and next Tuesday”.
A situation that led the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, to invite the government to take action to tackle a phenomenon that “has a very rapid impact on the health of the population, especially the most vulnerable people”.
The heat wave is expected to spread to other Western and Central European countries.
In the UK, the Meteorological Agency (Met Office) has since Sunday issued an orange alert for possible “extreme heat”.
Source: AFP and EFE
Source: Clarin
