Exceptionally early heat wave shatters records and brings deaths in Europe

The Unit­ed King­dom smashed a cen­tu­ry-old tem­per­a­ture record for the sec­ond time in 24 hours on Tues­day as a spring heat wave con­tin­ued to scorch parts of West­ern Eu­rope, trig­ger­ing gov­ern­ment warn­ings about risks to life. Sev­er­al drown­ings were re­port­ed in Britain and France as peo­ple tried to cool down.

A tem­per­a­ture of 35.1 Cel­sius (95.2 Fahren­heit) was record­ed at Lon­don’s Kew Gar­dens, Britain’s Met Of­fice weath­er ser­vice said, break­ing the 34.8 C (94.6 F) record set a day ear­li­er at Kew. The pro­vi­sion­al read­ings smashed the long-stand­ing record of 32.8 C (91.4 F) set in 1922 and matched in 1944.

Lon­don al­so record­ed a rare “trop­i­cal night,” de­fined as one in which the tem­per­a­ture does not fall be­low 20 C (68 F).

Records al­so fell in France, where tem­per­a­tures reached 36 C (97 F) on Mon­day in the coun­try’s south­west and wide­ly re­mained above 20 C at night.

The na­tion­al weath­er ser­vice, Météo-France, said a “heat dome,” with heat held in place by a high-pres­sure weath­er front, was pro­duc­ing tem­per­a­tures more than 10 de­grees Cel­sius above what is usu­al for this time of year.

Un­pre­dictable and ex­treme weath­er is be­com­ing more fre­quent as Earth warms. Ex­perts say un­prece­dent­ed and dead­ly weath­er ex­tremes that some­times strike at ab­nor­mal times and in un­usu­al places are putting more peo­ple in dan­ger.

“We know be­yond a shad­ow of a doubt that heat wave events such as this have been made more like­ly and more se­vere due to cli­mate change aris­ing from our emis­sions of heat-trap­ping green­house gas­es,” said Pe­ter Thorne, di­rec­tor of the ICARUS Cli­mate Re­search Cen­tre, at Maynooth Uni­ver­si­ty, in Ire­land. “But, nev­er­the­less, many of the records be­ing set, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the U.K. and France, are mind-bog­gling­ly crazy.”

Af­ter a U.K. long week­end that sent peo­ple flock­ing to beach­es, pools and shady parks, Lon­don com­muters swel­tered on Tues­day in sub­way car­riages with­out air con­di­tion­ing. Trains to and from the busy Wa­ter­loo sta­tion were dis­rupt­ed by a re­port of smoke on the tracks.

In Scot­land, fire­fight­ers worked through the night to douse a grass fire that sent smoke bil­low­ing from Arthur’s Seat, the rocky hill that looms over Ed­in­burgh.

The U.K. Health Se­cu­ri­ty Agency is­sued an am­ber health alert for large parts of the coun­try through Thurs­day, warn­ing of a po­ten­tial health risk, par­tic­u­lar­ly among old­er peo­ple, at the hottest times of the day. The U.K. is used to mod­er­ate tem­per­a­tures, and many homes, schools and busi­ness­es do not have air con­di­tion­ing.

At least four teenagers died in ap­par­ent drown­ings in U.K. lakes and reser­voirs, and a 60-year-old man died in the sea in south­west Eng­land, au­thor­i­ties said.

French gov­ern­ment spokesper­son Maud Bre­geon said there have been re­ports of at least sev­en deaths po­ten­tial­ly re­lat­ed to high tem­per­a­tures, in­clud­ing five drown­ings and two deaths in sports com­pe­ti­tions.

The ear­ly heat wave has struck be­fore the an­nu­al sum­mer win­dow when life­guards watch over bathers at pop­u­lar beach­es, in­creas­ing risks.

On France’s At­lantic seaboard, where mag­nif­i­cent beach­es have pow­er­ful rip­tides, of­fi­cials re­port­ed a rash of emer­gen­cies in the surf, with two drown­ing deaths on Sun­day at pop­u­lar re­sorts in the Gironde re­gion in the south­west.

The top re­gion­al ad­min­is­tra­tor, So­phie Bro­cas, urged beach­go­ers “to ex­er­cise the ut­most cau­tion.”

The un­sea­son­able heat ex­tend­ed to Spain, where weath­er ser­vice spokesper­son Rubén del Cam­po said: “We find our­selves with tem­per­a­tures we nor­mal­ly see in the mid­dle of the sum­mer now in the month of May.”

He said Seville hit 38 C (100 F) over the week­end, while large parts of the Iber­ian Penin­su­la saw tem­per­a­tures 5 to 10 de­grees Cel­sius high­er than nor­mal.

And in Rome, tem­per­a­tures were ex­pect­ed to reach 32 de­grees C (89.6 F) on Tues­day. —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by JILL LAW­LESS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers John Leices­ter in Paris and Joseph Wil­son in Barcelona, Spain, con­tributed to this re­port.