The heatwave gripping Europe is putting people’s health at risk, and the continent’s leaders must invest in making their health services more climate-resilient, the WHO chief said Wednesday.
Temperatures climbed across Europe again as the record-breaking heatwave left tens of thousands of people without power on a continent ill-equipped to handle searing heat.
“Europe’s heatwave is closing schools and putting people’s health at risk,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization.
“The data are clear: temperatures across Europe are rising at roughly twice the global average rate, increasing the likelihood and severity of extreme heat in the future,” he said on X.
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“We cannot afford further delay. Leaders must prioritise investment in climate-resilient health systems, while also accelerating climate action and mitigating the drivers of the climate crisis.”
Scientists say human-driven climate change is amplifying such extremes, with weather events like heatwaves, droughts and floods becoming more intense and frequent.
The current heatwave is “significantly exacerbated by human-induced climate change”, without which the current temperatures would have been 2 to 4C cooler, according to a scientific study published this week.
The WHO on Wednesday urged people to be aware of the difference between heat exhaustion and heatstroke.
The signs of heat exhaustion are headaches, dizziness, nausea and cramps, while heatstroke — “a life-threatening emergency” — can be identified by confusion, collapse and seizures.
The UN health agency says high-intensity heatwaves can bring high acute mortality, noting that “in 2003, 70,000 people in Europe died as a result of the June-August event”.
The WHO recommends using electric fans only when temperatures are below 40C — above that, “fans will heat the body”.
If using air conditioning, setting the thermostat to 27C and using an electric fan will make the room feel 4C cooler, it says, adding that “it may be cooler outdoors in the shade”.
It says people should drink water regularly during heat episodes, drinking at least two to three litres per day.
This comes as the head of the UN’s climate experts panel said Wednesday that the heatwave scorching Europe has exceeded some scientific projections, warning that the continent would inevitably face more extremes as the planet warms.
The conditions hitting Europe this week are “at the edge of the envelope” of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has long projected, IPCC chairman Jim Skea said.
But some impacts at the regional level and in the ocean have exceeded expectations, Skea told journalists.
“Some things… have gone outside the envelope in terms of what we are experiencing,” he said.
France recorded its hottest day on record on Tuesday while several other European countries, from Britain to Hungary, have issued high-level heat warnings.
At least 94 million people in Europe are expected to experience temperatures above 35C on Wednesday, most of them in France and Spain, according to AFP calculations.
“Inevitably, we’re going to experience more of what we’ve been seeing over the last few days,” Skea said.
He noted that the hottest days warm much faster than average days, increasing by a factor of 50 to 100 percent.
In a world where temperatures would rise by 2C on average, the warmest day of the year would be 3C to 3.5C hotter.
Maximum temperatures are expected to surpass 30C for more than 350 million people across Europe (excluding Turkey), representing nearly two-thirds of the population, according to an analysis based on forecasts from the German weather service and 2025 population projections from the Joint Research Centre.
