LONDON (AP) — Britain broke its highest temperature record ever on Tuesday amid a heat wave that has scorched parts of Europe, as Britain’s national weather service said those highs are now a fact of life in a country ill-prepared for these extremes. .
The typically temperate nation was the latest to be hit by unusually hot and dry weather that has sparked wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and caused hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames rushing onto a French beach and Britons sweltering, even by the sea, have raised concerns at home about climate change.
Britain’s Met Office recorded a provisional reading of 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in Coningsby in eastern England, breaking the record set just hours earlier. Before Tuesday, Britain’s highest temperature on record was 38.7C (101.7F), set in 2019. By afternoon, 29 places in the UK had broken the record.
As the nation watched with a combination of horror and fascination, Met Office chief scientist Stephen Belcher said such temperatures in Britain were “virtually impossible” without human-driven climate change.
He warned that “we could see temperatures like this every three years” without serious action on carbon emissions.
The sweltering weather has disrupted travel, healthcare and schools. Many homes, small businesses and even public buildings, including hospitals, in Britain do not have air conditioning, a reflection of the unusual heat in the country best known for rain and mild temperatures.
Intense heat since Monday has damaged the runway at London Luton Airport, forcing it to close for several hours, and warped a major road in eastern England, leaving it looking like a “skatepark,” the police said. Major train stations were closed or nearly empty on Tuesday as trains were canceled or run at low speeds amid concerns that tracks could break.
London faced what Mayor Sadiq Khan called a “huge increase” in fires due to the heat. The London Fire Brigade listed 10 major fires it was battling in the city on Tuesday, half of them grass fires. Footage showed several houses engulfed in flames as smoke billowed from burning fields in Wennington, a village on the outskirts of east London.
Fan sales at one retailer, Asda, increased by 1,300%. Electric fans cooled the traditional mounted troops of the Household Cavalry as they stood guard in central London in heavy ceremonial uniforms. The length of the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace was shortened. The capital’s Hyde Park, normally busy with walkers, was eerily quiet except for the long queues to swim in the Serpentine Lake.
“I go to my office because it’s nice and cool,” said geologist Tom Elliott, 31, after taking a bath. “I rode my bike instead of taking the subway.”
Always unconditional, Queen Elizabeth II continued to work. The 96-year-old monarch held a virtual audience with new US ambassador Jane Hartley from the safety of Windsor Castle.
Much of England, from London in the south to Manchester and Leeds in the north, remained under the country’s first “red” warning for extreme heat on Tuesday, meaning there is a risk of death even for to healthy people
These dangers could be seen in Britain and throughout Europe. At least six people were reported to have drowned while trying to cool off in UK rivers, lakes and reservoirs. In Spain and neighboring Portugal, hundreds of heat-related deaths have been reported due to the heat wave.
Climate experts warn that global warming has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, with studies showing that temperatures in the UK are now 10 times more likely to reach 40C (104F) than in it was pre-industrial.
The head of the United Nations weather agency has expressed hope that the heat gripping Europe will serve as a “wake-up call” for governments to do more about climate change. Other scientists used the milestone moment to emphasize that it was time to act.
“Although still rare, 40C is now a reality of British summers,” said Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. “Whether it becomes very common or remains relatively rare is in our hands and is determined by when and at what global average temperature we reach zero.”
The extreme heat also boiled over other parts of Europe. In Paris, the thermometer at the oldest weather station in the French capital, opened in 1873, exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for only the third time. The 40.5 C (104.9 F) measured there by weather service Meteo-France on Tuesday was the station’s second-highest reading, surpassed only by about 42.6 C (108.7 F) in July 2019 .
Drought and heat waves linked to climate change have also made wildfires more common and harder to fight.
In the Gironde region of southwestern France, ferocious wildfires continued to spread through dry pine forests, thwarting the extinguishing efforts of more than 2,000 firefighters and water-bombing planes.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from homes and summer vacation spots since the fires broke out on July 12, Gironde authorities said.
A third, smaller fire broke out on Monday afternoon in the Medoc wine region north of Bordeaux, further straining resources. Five campsites have caught fire in the beach area of the Atlantic coast, where flames raged around the sea basin of Arcachon, famous for its oysters and resorts.
In Greece, a large forest fire broke out northeast of Athens, fanned by strong winds. Fire officials said nine firefighting planes and four helicopters were deployed to try to prevent the flames from reaching inhabited areas on the slopes of Mount Penteli, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of the capital. Smoke from the fire obscured part of the city’s skyline.
But the weather forecast offered some solace, with temperatures expected to cool along the Atlantic coast on Tuesday and the chance of rain arriving later in the day.
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Associated Press writers Sylvia Hui and Jo Kearney in London, John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this story.
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