Europe’s relentless heatwaves: What’s next?
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The Pat Kenny Show. With Timber Living Log Cabins. Saturday and Sunday from 10am. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts. Now, Europe has barely emerged from one of the most intense heat waves ever recorded, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees, thousands of excess deaths reported, and scientists describing it as a historic event. But now forecasters are warning that another spell of extreme heat is set to grip large parts of the continent in coming days. Naomi O'Leary, Europe correspondent with the Irish Times, joins us now from Spain. Good morning, Naomi.
Hi, good morning, Pat. Great to be with you.
What recent heatwave events are impacting Europe?
You normally report to us from the city, in other words, surrounded by concrete and city temperatures tend to feel even hotter than maybe seaside temperatures. How's the temperature with you this morning?
it's not bad at all um but there are quite high temperatures forecast in different parts of spain starting from today it's kind of a mixed picture so there are areas which are normally very temperate places like the basque country and galicia and parts of northern spain that are forecast they have weather alerts and they're forecast to receive really high temperatures for from today and also parts of the southeast And one of the issues is high nighttime temperatures. So nighttime temperatures that are like between 25 to 27 degrees don't go lower than that, which is very hard on people. That doesn't give you an opportunity for your body to cool down or for the building to cool down. So it makes the heat really relentless.
Now, you saw what happened in the cities during the most recent heat wave. What sort of things do you recall as being quite anomalous?
so um i reported a fair bit on the effects of the heat wave in france where it was really dramatic so you had temperatures of well over 40 degrees in paris and in other parts of france like 43 as high as 43 degrees which are extraordinary and at night time the temperature wasn't below 25 degrees in urban areas and just to give context normally 25 degrees is the peak June temperature in Paris. So that's the daytime peak. And instead of that happening during the day, that was the minimum temperature at night at like 3 a.m. And those kind of conditions for a city that's built for maximums of like 15 degrees lower are really intense. um so what you saw was people widespread widespread practice of blocking out windows um often using emergency blankets which are like a tinsel type of blanket that blocks the sun and reflects it back out and there was a kind of scramble for air conditioners and fans that were sold out everywhere um and it had terrible effects in hospitals as you can imagine lots of public buildings don't have air conditioning um schools were closed thousands of schools were closed
And lots of people who had to continue their jobs in the heat were overcome. There was a bus driver who crashed because he was overcome by the heat and, you know, teachers collapsing and really difficult conditions for medical staff and patients as well in hospitals.
And rather than try to catalogue each and every one of those extra deaths, they just look at what is the normal death toll during a typical June and then they compare it to what happens. And they know for sure, for sure, there are excessive deaths which have been caused by the temperature.
Yeah, the figures they have so far are partial because it takes a little while to count all the deaths. They're counted in different ways. But the figure we have now is over 2,000 excess deaths, so more deaths than would be expected during the heatwave period. And this is because people who are elderly, people who might have conditions like diabetes or any kind of chronic condition and also young children, anyone who's dependent on carers to look after them, they're particularly vulnerable to heat. It's about whether you and your body are able to cool yourself down sufficiently. And some people aren't. and then their bodies overheat and it can actually lead to death.
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