The phrase has become a cliché: “The hottest summer so far, the coolest summer left.” The heat continues to increase in Europe, the continent that is warming at the fastest rate due to global warming.
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If fires are already expected, and hundreds of thousands of hectares have burned in recent months in Spain and France, now drought is also causing problems with rivers: some disappear, and even the largest drop to levels where navigation is no longer possible.
Heat waves, meanwhile, are becoming more frequent and intense. If in Andalusia or Sicily the stifling heat is something “normal” for summer, France from north to south is already getting used to temperatures not dropping during the nights.
The data is clear: Europe is the continent warming the fastest. The entire planet today is 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than during the period between 1850 and 1900, defined as the pre-industrial era. In comparison, the Old Continent has increased by 2.4 degrees, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
This 2025 the situation accelerated, and between 95% and 100% of the continent recorded above-average temperatures. Compared to another reference period, between 1991 and 2020, averages have increased by 0.9 degrees.
“Since the 1980s, Europe has warmed at a rate approximately twice the global average, making it the fastest warming continent. This is not due to a single factor, but a combination of influences. The Mediterranean region is a climate hotspot: there, warming occurs faster than the global average, increasing the risk of heat waves, droughts, and conditions conducive to wildfires across much of Europe,” Samantha Burgess, head of climate strategy at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, explains to La Tercera:
France in particular has broken its records. The Hexagon has already experienced 52 days within a heat wave since mid-June, according to an AFP analysis based on Météo-France data. This is a record since measurements began in 1947, and the summer of 2026 is not over yet. The previous record, set in 2022, was 33 days, compared to 22 days during the devastating summer of 2003.
Paris, to give the clearest example, has already spent more than 40 days exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. This, in a city that historically had highs between 23 and 26 degrees during the same dates.
On the other side of the Pyrenees, more accustomed to heat, Spaniards are suffering due to wildfires, which generally spread across all Mediterranean countries. In Spain alone, 43 “large wildfires” have been recorded, meaning those that exceed 500 hectares burned.
Among the most severe fires are the one that occurred in Burgohondo, province of Ávila, which destroyed 50,000 hectares, and another in the province of Huelva, which damaged 33,000. The deadliest fire in Spain in the 21st century also occurred near Almería, where 14 people died.
Meanwhile, Belgium experienced the largest fire in its history in an area near Germany. The German city of Monschau ordered a partial evacuation, and while at one point it was 80 hectares, by Sunday it had reached 3,000. Generally, the country is not accustomed to high temperatures, but some places felt 37 degrees Celsius this Friday, which facilitated the spread of fires.
In Salamina, the island facing Athens, hundreds of people had to be evacuated after two fires were declared, in a place popular with local tourists. In a single day, local firefighters declared 36 fires.
Returning to France, a wildfire near Bordeaux forced the evacuation of 224,000 people. This, after 420 square kilometers burned: almost four times the area of Paris.
The suffocating temperatures have cost the lives of about 25,000 Europeans so far this summer, with more than 9,500 deaths in Germany alone during the terrifying heat wave of the last week of June.
The summer of 2026 in France, even before August has ended, will go down in history as one of the worst and deadliest since records began. The country counted 1,243 additional deaths between July 3 and 22, during the second summer heat wave, adding to the 5,764 deaths recorded from June 17 to 30, in the first heat wave. This places the provisional total at about 7,300 deaths, according to reports this Wednesday from the Ministry of Health and the agency Santé Publique France. Thus, the current summer is already the deadliest since 2003, with 15,000 deaths.
It is not only the temperature but the lack of rain that brings problems in Europe, especially in the rivers. In western Germany, the Rhine River recorded its lowest level since statistics began. The situation is similar in major European rivers, such as the Danube and the Po.
This has ended up affecting industries such as transport and agriculture, which heavily depend on these water bodies. In particular, EU observatories indicate that drought concentrated in the center and west of the continent.
Due to the lack of water, Serbia had to shut down its coal power plants, as it could not use its cooling systems. In Romania, they had to perform a “controlled explosion” of a rock on the banks of the Danube to increase the water flow reaching a nuclear power plant. Hungary had to completely stop its only nuclear power plant, which was cooled by the now-vanished waters of the same river.
On the Rhine, which flows through Germany and the Netherlands, historic lows have been seen, and at the Kaub measuring station, which measures the river’s navigability, it was noted that low levels could affect ships passing through. Cargo ships transporting essential goods to Rotterdam via the Rhine travel at 30% of their capacity to avoid running aground.
“Low river levels are one of the most obvious ways extreme weather events affect daily life and economic activity,” Burgess explains. “When major rivers like the Rhine and Danube have levels too low for navigation, freight transport is disrupted, shipping costs increase, and supply chains are affected far beyond the river basin itself,” she adds.
Likewise, the expert highlights: “Extremely low river levels put pressure on agriculture, ecosystems, drinking water supply, and energy production. These effects demonstrate that climate risks are not merely environmental; they have increasingly direct consequences for economies and infrastructure, as well as disrupting people’s daily lives.”
One of the hardest hits is agriculture, with the production of major granaries decimated: wheat production in the EU and the UK will fall by 24% this year, costing producers about 2 billion euros. This has forced France to promise aid to a very sensitive sector. The new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham describes the situation as a “powder keg,” while in Italy they have already requested water from Switzerland to avoid losing rice fields. According to the newspaper El País, the short-term economic blow from the great European drought will be at least 50 billion euros.
Europe is warming at an accelerated rate and is trapped between two critical territories: on one hand, it receives winds from North Africa that heat from the Mediterranean, but on the other, it does not cool enough due to its proximity to the Arctic, precisely because this area leads the temperature increase.
“Europe is connected to the Arctic, which is warming much faster than the rest of the planet,” Ben Clarke from the Copernicus service told DW. The Arctic is 3.2 °C warmer than in the pre-industrial era.
This part of the world experiences a key vicious circle: the process known as albedo feedback. Bright snow and ice reflect much of the Sun’s heat back into space, but as they melt, they expose darker surfaces. These, like land and ocean, absorb more heat.
“So, as sea ice melts, more heat is absorbed, which in turn warms the waters even more and melts more ice,” Clarke explained.
The rate of temperature change varies across Europe and is concentrated in the south. The east and southeast of the continent, as well as parts of central Europe, including the Alps, have warmed between 0.5 °C and 1 °C per decade over the last 30 years, according to Copernicus. The west and southwest of Europe, as well as subarctic Finland, Norway, and Sweden, have warmed between 0.2 °C and 0.5 °C per decade.
Facing this scenario, Burgess says that “adaptation is already happening across Europe and will become increasingly important as climate warming continues.” “For many Europeans, the most noticeable change will be the increased frequency and intensity of heat waves. Buildings, transport networks, and energy systems designed for past climates will need to be increasingly resilient to current and future climates,” she warns.
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