The heat waves are ravaging several places in Europe. In several places, the temperature has climbed above 40 degrees this summer.
In Portugal and Spain, similar droughts have not been measured in 1,200 years, according to NTB. Records are also being set in Italy. It will be 70 years since the country experienced a summer as hot as this year.
– HERJET: This satellite image from July shows how an area in Portugal has been affected by forest fires this summer. Photo: Planet Labs PB/Handout via Reuters
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Has claimed 1,700 human lives
The high temperatures create several challenges and, among other things, cause crops to dry out. However, it also causes a number of forest fires to spread.
TV 2 wrote on Saturday that fires across Europe have led to close to 575,000 hectares of forest have been lost. It is an area 100,000 hectares larger than what burned down in the whole of 2021.
The heat has also claimed more than 1,700 human lives in Spain and Portugal alone, according to the report World Health Organization. Even more have lost their homes.
– LIGHTS UP: A resident of the Portuguese town of Fiolhoso looks at the flames from a forest fire that light up the darkness of the night in northern Portugal. Photo: Patricia De Melo Moreira/AP
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– SEA OF FLAMES: A fire plane over a forest in the province of Guadalajara in Spain. Photo: Rafael Martin/Europa Press
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– ASH FOREST: A house in the middle of the burnt forest at El Pont de Vilomara in Spain. Photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo
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140 forest fires
In addition to Portugal and Spain, Greece is among the countries that have been hit hard by the high temperatures.
According to the Greek broadcaster ERT Since Friday, more than 140 forest fires have broken out in Greece, including on the popular holiday island of Lesvos, where more than 450 people are said to have been evacuated.
– It is an explosive cocktail of drought, high temperatures and strong winds, said spokesman Yiannis Artopoios of the Greek fire service at a press conference on Sunday evening, according to the news agency AFP.
– BLACK SMOKE: A power cable and a traffic light are about to be engulfed by the flames at the Greek town of Krestena, south of Olympia. Photo: Giannis Spirounis/Eurokinissi
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– FIRE EXTINGUISHING: A fire helicopter drops water on a forest fire near the Greek town of Krestena on Sunday. Photo: Giannis Spirounis/Eurokinissi
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– BURNT OUT: A burnt out area in the Dadia National Park, in the Greek region of Evros on Monday. Photo: Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters
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Many are affected
Also in France, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, fire crews have battled forest fires.
In Great Britain it was in mid-July for the first time recorded over 40 degrees Celsius.
– WRECK: A burnt-out car in a wooded area hit by a forest fire in south-west France. Photo: Philippe Lopez/AFP
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– NATIONAL PARK: Firefighters battle the flames in the Ceske Svycarsko National Park in the Czech Republic. The fire started on Sunday and spread further on Monday this week. Photo: Hajek Vojtech/CTK
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– FIGHT: A firefighter battles the flames in the Sierra de la Culebra in Spain on Saturday. The sea of flames has already swallowed large areas of cultivated land. Photo: Emilio Fraile/Europa Press
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Can contribute to food shortages
In Italy, 30 percent of the country’s crops are expected to be lost due to the drought, writes Bloomberg.
Earlier this year reported FN that climate change is a threat to global food security. Shortages of grain, for example, primarily affect residents of the poorest countries. This was explained by Professor of Social Economics, Halvor Mehlum, to E24 earlier this week.
– Production cuts cause prices to rise. The rich will be able to eat as before, while the poor will not have access to food.
Despite the fact that the UN earlier in July could report that Ukraine and Russia had signed an agreement on the export of grain, the wheat shortage in the world is still great as a result of the invasion.
– FIRE AND SMOKE: Battle against the flames in Massarosa, central Italy. Photo: Federico Scoppa/AFP
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– EVACUATION: Around 1,000 firefighters have been fighting the flames in western Slovenia for the past week. The forest fires have spread with the wind from Italy and have resulted in the evacuation of a number of towns. Photo: Sasa Miljevic/Pixsell
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– FIRE ON THE BORDER: A helicopter flies through the smoke from a forest fire on the border between Slovenia and Italy. Photo: Borut Zivulovic/Reuters
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The UN climate panel warns
Recent research shows that climate change has already led to more frequent and more intense heat waves, and that 2011-2020 was the warmest decade ever recorded.
UN climate panel IPCC warned recently and said that we are starting to have a very bad time if the world is to manage to keep the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees and thus avoid the most devastating climate consequences.
– We face a number of challenges, such as limiting global warming. The fact that we are already seeing climate-related extreme events in Europe underlines the urgency, said Mauro Facchini at the European Commission’s Directorate-General.
– STRONG FIGHT: A local resident fights a grass fire with a shovel in northwest Spain. According to the Spanish authorities, hundreds of residents have lost their lives due to the extreme heat wave. Photo: Bernat Armangue/AP Photo
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– WATER: This photo, taken by the local fire service, shows how the fire service is fighting the spread of the large flames with water. The firefighters on the ground are also helped by fire planes that drop large quantities of water over the areas. Photo: SDIS 33 via AP
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