Much of Europe, U.S. grapple with scorching temperatures | CBC News

Global temperatures headed toward alarming highs and extreme weather proliferated as the world’s two biggest polluters, China and the United States, sought on Monday to reignite climate talks.

With scientists saying the target of keeping global warming within 1.5 C of pre-industrial levels is moving beyond reach, evidence of the crisis was everywhere. A remote town in China’s arid northwest, Sanbao, registered a national record of 52.2 C (126 F).

Wildfires in Europe raged ahead of a second heat wave in two weeks that’s set to send temperatures as high as 48 C. In the United States, a quarter of the population fell under extreme heat advisories, partly due to a heat dome that has settled over western states.

“In many parts of the world, today is predicted to be the hottest day on record,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, wrote Monday on Twitter.

“The #ClimateCrisis is not a warning. It’s happening. I urge world leaders to ACT now.”

Europe

Tourists in Italy’s capital, Rome, cooled themselves under giant fans set up outside the Colosseum and took turns drinking from a fountain near the Spanish Steps.

In Spain, temperatures could rise to as high as 44 C in some regions. However, a forest fire on the island of La Palma in the Canaries that forced the evacuation of 4,000 people was being brought under control as temperatures fell, local official Sergio Rodriguez said in an interview on TVE.

The heat wave comes after the continent’s two hottest summers on record in 2022 and 2021, as measured by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

As many as 61,000 people may have died in Europe during heat waves last summer, with a repetition feared this season.

“My worry is really health — the health of vulnerable people who live just below the rooftops of houses which are not prepared for such high temperatures,” said Robert Vautard, a climate scientist and director of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute. “That could create a lot of deaths.”

In Cyprus, a 90-year-old man died and three people were in hospital with heat stroke symptoms as temperatures spiked above 45 C on Saturday, authorities said.

Buildings and roads are storing heat during the day and releasing it at night, causing temperatures to remain up to 4 C higher than in surrounding areas and contributing to health risks for vulnerable people, said Andreas Flouris, associate professor of physiology at Greece’s University of Thessaly.

“We’ve seen that this nighttime temperature increase in cities often contributes a lot more than we thought to mortality,” Flouris said.

WATCH | Southern Greece scorched by wildfires: 

Wildfires burn in southern Greece

Wildfires burning south of Athens sparked evacuations on Monday — including at a horse stable in Kalyvia — as fire crews in Greece struggled to beat back flames fanned by high winds.

The United States

The heat dome across the western U.S. also helped to generate heavy rains in the northeast, claiming at least five lives.

Across the country, temperatures in Phoenix hit 45.56 C (114 F) on Sunday, the 17th consecutive day of 43 C (110 F) or higher. The record is 18 days, set in June 1974. Phoenix, Arizona’s capital, is on track to break that record on Tuesday, said Gabriel Lojero, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

As well, tourists gathered in Furnace Creek on Sunday at California’s Death Valley, which dominates global heat records.

“It’s my first time being here, so I feel it would be really cool to be here for the hottest day ever on Earth for my first time,” said Kayla Hill, 24, of Salt Lake City.

The two hottest temperatures on record are 56.7 C (134 F) in 1913 in Death Valley and 55 C (131 F) in Tunisia in July 1931. Christopher Burt, a weather historian for the Weather Company, finds fault with both of those measurements and lists 54.4 C (130 F) in July 2021 in Death Valley as his hottest recorded temperature on Earth.

In July 2021 and August 2020, Death Valley recorded a reading of 54.4 C (130 F), but both are still awaiting confirmation. Scientists have found no problems so far, but they haven’t finished the analysis, said Russ Vose, climate analysis chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

WATCH l U.S. officials wonder about ‘new normal’ as heat impacts work and play:

U.S. battles flash flooding, extreme heat

Parts of the U.S. are battling severe weather as deadly flooding hits the northeast and extreme heat and wildfires impact the southwest.

There are other places similar to Death Valley that may be as hot, such as Iran’s Lut Desert, but like Death Valley they are uninhabited, so no one measures there, Burt said. The difference was someone decided to put an official weather station in Death Valley in 1911, he said.

In a resumption of diplomacy on global warming between the two superpowers, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Beijing on Monday, urging joint action to cut methane emissions and coal-fired power.

“It is toxic for both Chinese and for Americans and for people in every country on the planet,” Kerry said.

Prolonged high temperatures in China are threatening power grids and crops and raising concerns about a repeat of last year’s drought, the most severe in 60 years.