Western Europe bakes under a ‘heat dome’ as temperatures climb and authorities warn of health risks

Much of west­ern Eu­rope baked un­der a “heat dome” Wednes­day as tem­per­a­tures soared to­ward 40 de­grees Cel­sius (104 Fahren­heit) in places, and weath­er agen­cies warned that the ex­treme con­di­tions could en­dan­ger lives across coun­tries, many of which have lim­it­ed air con­di­tion­ing.

France record­ed its hottest-ever day for the sec­ond day run­ning. The Me­teo France weath­er agency said the coun­try’s na­tion­al ther­mal in­di­ca­tor — an av­er­age of tem­per­a­tures mea­sured at 30 weath­er sta­tions — hit a new record of 30 C (86 F), the lat­est in a se­ries of nev­er-be­fore-reg­is­tered highs. The mer­cury sur­passed 40 C (104 F) in some lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing in Paris.

The French weath­er agency put three-quar­ters of the coun­try un­der a red alert for ex­treme heat start­ing at mid­day Thurs­day un­til the same time Fri­day. The warn­ing en­com­passed tens of mil­lions of peo­ple. In the usu­al­ly tem­per­ate Brit­tany re­gion of north­west France, a heat-re­lat­ed equip­ment fail­ure knocked out pow­er to tens of thou­sands of house­holds that had to en­dure with­out elec­tric fans.

Mean­while, the U.K. record­ed its hottest June day, with 36 C (96.8 F) re­port­ed at Gosport and Wis­ley in south­ern Eng­land. The na­tion­al weath­er fore­cast­er is­sued a red alert for heat in much of cen­tral and south­ern Eng­land, as well as Wales.

Au­thor­i­ties warned peo­ple to take ex­tra care when swim­ming in un­su­per­vised ar­eas, such as rivers or lakes, fol­low­ing the deaths of around 40 peo­ple in France over the past week.

UK braces for an­oth­er breach of 40 de­grees Cel­sius

In the U.K., which has a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing gray and driz­zly even in sum­mer, the heat was par­tic­u­lar­ly un­com­fort­able, not least be­cause so much of the coun­try’s in­fra­struc­ture, such as build­ings and trans­porta­tion sys­tems, was built for cool­er weath­er.

The heat dome — a sta­tion­ary high-pres­sure sys­tem that traps heat and hu­mid­i­ty — took shape at a time when hu­man-caused cli­mate change fu­els in­creas­ing­ly ex­treme weath­er. The U.N. cli­mate agency projects that the next five years will like­ly shat­ter more heat records.

“Heat waves are be­com­ing more fre­quent, longer and hot­ter with cli­mate change, as a di­rect re­sult of the fos­sil fu­els we are re­leas­ing as a so­ci­ety,” said Hay­ley Fowler, a pro­fes­sor at the Cen­tre for Cli­mate and En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­silience at New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty in the north­east of Eng­land. “We can ex­pect to have to cope with more and more of these types of events in the years to come.”

More than 1,000 schools in Eng­land have closed due to the heat, and many train ser­vices have been can­celed, with pas­sen­gers be­ing urged to avoid nonessen­tial trav­el in ar­eas cov­ered by the warn­ing.

The red heat warn­ing was on­ly the sec­ond is­sued by U.K. au­thor­i­ties fol­low­ing Ju­ly 2022, when tem­per­a­tures ex­ceed­ed 40 C (104 F) for the first time. The tem­per­a­ture is set to fall short of 40 C on Wednes­day but could breach that lev­el — con­sid­ered al­most unimag­in­able not long ago — on Thurs­day.

“Red warn­ings are re­served for the most se­vere events,” said Mark Sid­away, deputy chief fore­cast­er for the Met Of­fice, the U.K. weath­er agency. He said of­fi­cials ex­pect­ed the ef­fects to ex­tend “be­yond those who are nor­mal­ly more vul­ner­a­ble to the heat.”

It’s been so hot that male jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the U.K.’s tra­di­tion-bound Par­lia­ment were al­lowed to re­move their jack­ets Wednes­day in the press gallery of the House of Com­mons.

Au­thor­i­ties try to con­tain risks

In France, Italy and Spain, more than 100 mil­lion peo­ple were warned to be ex­tra vig­i­lant about the dan­gers of the heat wave.

With the mer­cury ris­ing, many of France’s ma­jor at­trac­tions, in­clud­ing the Eif­fel Tow­er and the Lou­vre mu­se­um in Paris, have re­strict­ed vis­it­ing hours. Schools and trans­porta­tion sched­ules were al­so up­end­ed.

An­na Fors­gren, a tourist from Swe­den, said she was re­lieved to have made it in­to the Lou­vre be­fore the 4 p.m. clos­ing time, af­ter wait­ing decades to vis­it. She said it was “un­be­liev­ably hot in­side, so we won­der if it’s go­ing to dam­age the art in some way.”

Tens of thou­sands of homes in north­west France were with­out pow­er af­ter two elec­tri­cal trans­form­ers in Brit­tany were tak­en out of ser­vice late Tues­day fol­low­ing an ex­plo­sion ap­par­ent­ly linked to the heat wave. Around 68,000 house­holds were still af­fect­ed by the pow­er out­age on Wednes­day.

In Italy, 16 cities, in­clud­ing Rome, Mi­lan, Flo­rence and Turin, were un­der heat alerts. The “bolli­no rosso” sig­nals that the risks are not re­strict­ed to the el­der­ly.

Tem­per­a­tures were pre­dict­ed to climb to­ward 41 C (105 F) in Flo­rence and 38 C (104 F) in Mi­lan, while Rome and Naples were fore­cast to stay be­low 36 C (96.8 F).

In Vat­i­can City, the faith­ful fanned them­selves and hud­dled un­der um­brel­las in St. Pe­ter’s Square to at­tend Pope Leo XIV’s week­ly au­di­ence.

“We did not feel any heat at all, on­ly great love for the pope,” said Mon­i­ca Ruiz, a 52-year-old pil­grim from Spain.

Busi­ness­es ad­just for cool­er hours

One rem­e­dy be­ing tout­ed came from soc­cer’s World Cup, which is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in the U.S., Cana­da and Mex­i­co. The Eu­ro­pean Trade Union Con­fed­er­a­tion said em­ploy­ers should of­fer the same cool­ing breaks used at the World Cup and grant all work­ers paid breaks to help keep them safe in in­tense heat.

“Tak­ing a break in high tem­per­a­tures is a com­mon­sense pre­cau­tion, but too many em­ploy­ers are re­fus­ing to put these and oth­er nec­es­sary mea­sures in place or even dis­cuss them with trade unions, lead­ing to a ris­ing num­ber of avoid­able deaths in Eu­ro­pean work­places,” ETUC Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Es­ther Lynch said.

Busi­ness­es across Eu­rope have heed­ed that ad­vice.

At a ma­jor build­ing project span­ning Paris’ busy ring road, con­struc­tion work­ers have shift­ed to ear­li­er hours. Man­agers at the site have in­tro­duced stag­gered sched­ules, with most work­ers now start­ing at 6 a.m. and fin­ish­ing around 1 p.m.

“As soon as the sun comes out, the work­ers are re­al­ly go­ing to take time to take breaks every hour and cool down,” deputy site man­ag­er Travis De­mar­que said. —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by PAN PY­LAS and SYLVIE COR­BET | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Dan­i­ca Kir­ka and Jill Law­less in Lon­don, Sylvie Cor­bet in Paris, Colleen Bar­ry in Mi­lan, Samuel Pe­tre­quin and Alexan­der Turn­bull in Paris and Gi­a­da Zam­pano in Rome con­tributed to this re­port.