Officials have warned residents and tourists packing Mediterranean destinations to stay indoors during the hottest hours as the second heat wave in as many weeks hits the region and Greece, Spain and Switzerland battled wildfires.
In Italy, civil protection workers monitored crowds for people in distress from the heat in central Rome, while Red Cross teams in Portugal took to social media to warn people not to leave pets or children in parked cars. In Greece, volunteers handed out drinking water, and in Spain they reminded people to protect themselves from breathing in smoke from fires.
“Heat waves are really an invisible killer,” Panu Saaristo, the emergency health team leader for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said during a Geneva briefing. “We are experiencing hotter and hotter temperatures for longer stretches of time every single summer here in Europe.”
The new heat wave in several parts of southern Europe is expected to persist for days. The U.N. weather agency said that temperatures in Europe, amplified by climate change, could break the 48.8-degree Celsius (119.8-degree Fahrenheit) record set in Sicily two years ago.
As concerns grew the extreme heat would cause a spike in deaths., civil protection volunteers distributed reusable water bottles at 28 popular spots in Rome. Authorities also encouraged visitors and residents to take advantage of the Italian capital’s distinctive public drinking fountains, hundreds of which are located in the city’s historic centre alone.
Fausto Alberetto, who was visiting Rome from northern Italy’s Piedmont region on Tuesday, asked some volunteers how to use an app to find the closest “nasone.” Reading about the heat wave before his trip did little to prepare him for the reality of Rome’s 40 C (104 F) temperatures, he said.
“We got information and we were prepared. But it is one thing to hear it or read it, it is another thing to feel it,″ Alberetto said as he walked near Piazza Venezia in the heart of Rome. “Here, it is really dreadful.”
Heat records are being shattered all over the world, and scientists say there is a good chance that 2023 will go down as the hottest year on record, with measurements going back to the middle of the 19th century.
Preliminary figures suggest the global average temperature last month set a new June record, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The World Meteorological Organization predicted that a number of heat records were set to fall this summer. The UN weather agency said unprecedented sea surface temperatures and low Arctic sea-ice levels were largely to blame.
Temperatures above 40 C (104 F) were forecast to persist not only in the Mediterranean, but across North America, Asia and North Africa.
A second heat wave is expected to hit Thursday, and temperatures as high as 44 C (111 F) were expected in parts of central and southern Greece by the end of the week.