The heat waves of recent weeks have crossed Europe from Portugal to the Balkans. In the United Kingdom the previous record high temperature (of all data) was 39.1 C, while on Tuesday Heathrow reached 40.2 C at London Airport with a new record. There have been fires elsewhere in Europe, as in Navarre.

In recent decades, climate change is increasingly affecting the weather of fires and the burned area. We are seeing truly devastating fires, and a study by Scientific Reports tells us that we have to prepare for more in the coming years. WTO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas agrees. At the press conference in Geneva, the heat wave has become “more and more frequent” due to climate change: “In the future these heat waves will be the usual and we will see them more extreme.”

The IPS news agency has pointed out that in many parts of Europe, especially in the Spanish and French states, forest fires have occurred and urban life has been damaged, even “hundreds of lives have been lost”. Taalas remembers at a press conference that in 2003 a heat wave killed 75,000 people in Europe.

In other parts of the world it has also suffered from strong heat waves, such as India or Pakistan and has rained less than normal has influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The Indian Meteorology Department has indicated that the temperature has been between 45 and 50 °C and that those in Pakistan have reached 50 °C on more than one occasion.

The WTO has pointed out that these extremes are part of the world’s natural change as a result of changes in the global climate model. But it ensures that the increase in frequency, duration and intensity in recent decades is clearly related to global warming attributable to human activity.