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Chapter 1: What are the current impacts of the heatwave in Europe?
This is The Guardian. We are seeing these temperatures of 40 and above, and I think that's something that is just very hard to comprehend. These are uncomfortable temperatures, and it quickly becomes dangerous. There have already been dozens of reported deaths. We're not used to the heat, and so we maybe fail to adapt when heat hits, and maybe we weren't even very prepared in the first place.
From The Guardian's Today In Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. Europe is experiencing its second deadly heatwave at a very early stage of the summer, with the situation particularly acute and deadly in France at the moment, but soon to spread to other parts of Europe. Ajit Naranjan, you are The Guardian's Europe Environment Correspondent. Can we start with France?
Because France has experienced a particularly terrible night and there have been sadly multiple deaths, haven't there?
So France has seen its hottest afternoons and nights on record, if you average the temperatures out across the country. And there have already been dozens of reported deaths. Now, many of these are actually from drowning, as people enter water bodies trying to cool down. A lot of them are very young people, young children in some cases.
But there have also been cases of people reportedly dying from heat stroke, which I guess is what many of us think about when we talk about heat waves and... I don't know, being caught outside having maybe not drunk enough water or working in a job like on a farm or sweeping a street.
In one particularly tragic case, there were two young children who were found dead in a car in southwestern France. And although it's unclear exactly what happened, the public prosecutor is treating it as the most likely line of inquiry. And this follows similar deaths in Spain just during the last heat wave, which, I mean, as any listeners in Western Europe will know, was only a few weeks ago.
and in one of these cases again a toddler died after being left in a car during just brutal heat
It is absolutely heartbreaking, the reporting about those two children left in a car in those conditions. Ajit, there's a meeting, a top level meeting in the French government this afternoon. What do we know about the measures that are being considered? As you say, some of this is about people kind of going into water resources to keep cool, but it's also about closing schools as well, isn't it?
Yeah, one of the big things that happens during heatwave when countries or cities respond well is that they adapt daily lives. In some cases, employers letting people leave work early or not coming to work at all. And schools is a particularly important one, right? We're just talking about how children are very much at risk.
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Chapter 2: How is France specifically affected by the heatwave?
Some of them might live in nice green areas where they've kind of got something happening to get rid of this urban heat island effect that just bakes cities further than the surrounding countryside. But others will be going to poorly insulated homes that kind of just let the heat get soaked up.
So these existing wealth disparities that will invariably affect those on lower incomes and the most vulnerable, which is really worrying. Here in the UK, we're expected to see record temperatures this afternoon for June. Similarly, as in France, there are a number of schools that are closing. That seems to be quite a widespread measure here.
You're in Berlin, where the heatwave hasn't quite hit, but is coming down the track. Is that right? And what does it look like across Europe?
Exactly. So Germany for now is, I mean, it's still very hot. I think the issue when some of these heat waves hit is that your sense of scale just completely warps, right? I think I was in 32 or 33 degree heat outside on Saturday for the whole day. And these are uncomfortable temperatures.
You've kind of quickly moved past the threshold where sitting with friends in a park and maybe enjoying a beer or something is fun. And it quickly becomes dangerous.
And so parts of particularly Western France and across Spain, you are like if you open up these maps of what the weather has been over the last 24 hours or what it's forecast for the rest of the week, we are seeing these temperatures of 40 and above. And I think that's something that is just very hard to comprehend in most of Western Europe.
Yeah. Well, it's temperatures that are perhaps comprehended in places like Greece, Portugal, Spain, that have fairly regularly in the last few years seen temperatures reach nearly 50 degrees, sort of the high 40s, and have perhaps been able to make adaptations as they've seen those higher temperatures.
But what's been striking this year is that these temperatures are being reported in countries like Belgium, northern France... the UK that are sort of unprecedented for this part of the summer. What do you think we can learn from some of those countries that have perhaps adapted to the kind of high 30s, early 40s type temperatures that we're now seeing?
Yeah, so on the one hand, you have these countries across Southern Europe on the Mediterranean, which by far are exposed to the most kind of astonishing temperatures that really lead to push the body past what it's able to cope with.
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