Record Heatwaves Grip Northern Hemisphere, Raising Concerns for Health and Environment

Ginebra.- The northern hemisphere, which has barely been under the summer solstice for a month, is suffocating under record daytime temperatures and tropical nighttime heat, dangerous for health, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday.

Suffocating heat has settled in half of Europe these days, but also in the United States and other parts of Asia and Africa, with record daytime temperatures and tropical nights, which has aroused growing concern about the consequences it may have on health. .

Currently, the northern hemisphere suffers six times more heat waves than in the eighties – Europe is also warming twice as fast as the world average – and in places where temperatures exceed 45 degrees, temperatures can remain in 40 degrees during the night, which is more dangerous for health than the daytime temperature, a WMO specialist said today.

“Nighttime temperatures are particularly dangerous to human health because the body is unable to recover from the permanent heat, leading to an increase in heart attacks and deaths,” said the organization’s extreme heat expert, John Nairn.

The problem with these extremely high temperatures is that a large part of the inhabitants of Europe are not used to them and the authorities are concerned about the possible health problems, especially for the most vulnerable.

Already last summer, in which mercury broke heat records in some parts of Europe, 61,672 people died from the heat, according to a recent study released by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), after that the European statistical office Eurostat already notified days before an unusually high excess mortality that summer.

Record temperatures in the US and Europe
Some one hundred million inhabitants of the southern and western US remain under extreme heat alerts, an “unrelenting” heat that this Tuesday could break several records, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

For today, meteorologists predict maximum temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit) in Phoenix (Arizona); 44 (111) in Las Vegas (Nevada), and 42 (107) in Dallas (Texas). And they will continue to rise until Wednesday, with a wind chill of up to 43 Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) in Little Rock, Arkansas, 42 (197) in Memphis, Tennessee, and 41 (105) in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The map shows extreme heat warnings from the coasts of California to Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, while the NWS warned that the Gulf of Mexico coast and south can expect temperatures of 32 to 34 degrees Celsius. (90 to 93 Fahrenheit).

Also in Spain, thirteen regions are on alert for very high temperatures, with special incidence in Aragon, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, where there is a red warning, of extreme risk, for values ​​that will reach up to 43 degrees.

And the Mediterranean temperature is already around 28 degrees off the Mediterranean coast and could even reach 30 before the month of August arrives, when the normal thing was to never reach that figure or to do it at the end of the summer.

Italy does not escape the infernal heat, and in fact it is there that they have baptized the powerful anticyclone that drives very warm air from Africa and that these days will leave historical highs of 47 degrees that are expected on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and nights torrid, in which it is difficult to fall asleep.

So unusual are these temperatures in some parts of the continent that the president of Germany’s Federation of Physicians of the Public Health Service (BVÖGD), Johannes Niessen, said today that his country should introduce customary customs in southern Europe during the summer months to adapt, such as the siesta.

“We should pay attention to the southern countries with regard to the heat in the workplace: getting up early, working productively in the morning and taking a nap at noon is a concept that we should introduce in the summer months,” according to Niessen.

Heat, drought and fires
The high temperatures, coupled with the drought, also fuel the forest fires that sometimes burn out of control even at the gates of large cities.

This is the case of Athens, where the fight against three large fires that broke out this Monday continues, which spread rapidly, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people and burning homes and cars.

The images released this morning by the Greek media show the devastation suffered in the aforementioned region, densely populated, with numerous houses, shops and cars completely burnt out.

Also in Spain, specifically on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands archipelago, in the Atlantic, there is a forest fire that has already burned some 3,500 hectares, forcing the eviction of thousands of people from nearby towns -who have already been able to return to their homes – and that they have entered a national park of great ecological value, that of Caldera de Taburiente.

With information from EFE