A heat wave ravaging Europe has moved north to the Uk and fueled fierce wildfires in Spain and France, where more than a dozen local temperature records have been broken.
Two other people died in fires in Spain that its prime minister has linked to global warming, claiming Monday that “climate renewal is killing. “
This is in addition to the many heat-related deaths reported in the Iberian Peninsula, as maximum temperatures have gripped the continent in recent days and sparked wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans. Some regions, in addition to northern Italy, are also experiencing prolonged droughts.
Climate scientists say potentially fatal heat waves are more intense, more common and longer due to climate change and, linked to droughts, have sparked wildfires to fight.
Severe heat waves have even occurred in places like the UK, where the government issued the country’s first excessive heat warning, and the weather service predicts that the record of 38. 7 degrees Celsius (101. 7 F), set in 2019, could be broken.
Temperatures reached 100 °F (38 °C) in southern England on Monday and are expected to reach a record 40 °C (104 °F) on Tuesday, according to the UK Met Office.
The national rail network has suggested passengers travel only when needed, with some facilities, adding a key address between the north-east of England and London, not operating parts of Tuesday.
London Luton Airport said flights were suspended on Monday after a defect in the runway surface was discovered, flights resumed later that day. Warm weather melted the runway at the Royal Air Force’s Brize Norton airbase, Sky News reported.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from London, said the UK cannot cope with heat waves, basically because of its “outdated and insufficient infrastructure” and widespread lack of air conditioning.
Regional temperature records in France were damaged in more than a dozen cities, as the weather service said Monday was “the day of this heat wave. “
The French temperate region of Brittany choked with a record 39. 3°C (102. 7°F) in the port of Brest, surpassing a peak of 35. 1°C (95. 2°F) that had been holding since September 2003, the French weather service Météo-France said.
Meteorologist Francois Gourand told news firm AFP on Monday that “in some parts of the southwest, it will be a warm apocalypse. “
Whirlpools of warm winds have battled fires in the region.
“The chimney is literally exploding,” said Marc Vermeulen, the chimney’s regional chief, who described the tree trunks breaking when the flames fed on them, sending burning embers into the air and further spreading the flames. “We are facing extreme situations,” he said.
Authorities have evacuated other cities, displacing another 14,900 people from areas that could be on the trail of fires and stifling smoke. In total, more than 31,000 people have been driven from their homes and hotels in Gironde since the wildfires began. on 12 July.
More than two hundred reinforcements addressed the 1,500 firefighters seeking to engage the flames in the Gironde, where flames approached popular vineyards and filled the Arcachon basin, known for its oysters and beaches, with smoke.
Three more planes were sent to sign up for six other fighters fighting the fires, collecting seawater and conducting repeated flights through thick clouds of smoke, the Interior Ministry said late Sunday.
Spain, for its part, reported a moment of death in two days in its own fires. The body of a 69-year-old sheep farmer was discovered Monday in the same mountainous domain where a 62-year-old firefighter died a day earlier when he caught through flames in the northwestern province of Zamora.
More than 30 forest fires in Spain have forced the evacuation of thousands of people and blackened 220 km2 (85 square miles) of forest and undergrowth.
“Climate renewal is killing,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday on a stopover in the western region of Extremadura, the site of three primary fires. “It kills people, it kills our ecosystems and our biodiversity. “
Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition, described her country as “literally fire” when she attended climate replacement talks in Berlin.
He warned of “terrifying customers still for the next few days,” after more than 10 days of temperatures above 40C (104F), cooling only at night.
At least 748 heat-related deaths from the heat wave were reported in Spain and neighboring Portugal, where temperatures reached 47°C (117°F) earlier this month.
Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Casas De Miravete in Extremadura, said firefighters continued to irrigate spaces with ground water and air “in an effort to try to moisten the soil so that wildfires resume. “
In Portugal, Monday’s much cooler weather helped fire crews progress. More than 600 firefighters witnessed four major fires in northern Portugal.
The Balkan region expects the worst of the heat later this week, but has already experienced sporadic wildfires.
Earlier Monday, the Slovenian government said firefighters had brought a fire control.
Croatia sent a plane dropping water there to help after battling its own wildfires along the Adriatic Sea last week. A fire in Sibenik forced others to evacuate their homes but was later extinguished.
Meanwhile, at the 12th Petersberg Climate Dialogue Conference in Berlin on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a stern warning that the global warming limit of 1. 5 degrees Celsius (2. 7 Fahrenheit) agreed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement was out of reach.
He suggested that nations keep the promises they had made in relation to the provision of budget to deal with the situation.