Although climate scientists warned in the nineteen-eighties that extreme heat posed a growing danger, policymakers in Europe didn\u2019t come to grips with it until August, 2003, when a heat wave killed more than seventy thousand people. What those officials still failed to plan for was that Europe would warm at a rate more than twice the global average. A number of regional factors explain why. One is the Continent\u2019s connection to the rapidly warming Arctic. Retreating snow exposes darker ground that absorbs more sunlight; as soils dry, they\u2019re less able to help with cooling the air. Meanwhile, strong winds carry hot air north from Africa, while declining aerosol pollution admits more sunlight, in a process called \u201cbrightening.\u201d Together, these effects have set the stage for the fierce summers, destructive wildfires, and suffocating heat domes that now threaten Europe\u2019s health, culture, and economy.<\/p>\n
Historically, heat has evaded crisis-level attention. Unlike camera-ready disasters\u2014hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, fires\u2014blistering temperatures rarely produce images dramatic enough to go viral. The typical victims are old, poor, and socially isolated residents of disadvantaged areas, making heat waves invisible killers of people largely invisible in public life.<\/p>\n
In the past five years, however, Europe\u2019s heat has become too lethal to ignore<\/a>: an estimated seventy thousand heat-related deaths in 2022, forty-eight thousand in 2023, and sixty-three thousand in 2024. This June\u2014Western Europe\u2019s hottest on record\u2014at least ten thousand excess deaths were recorded as Paris topped a hundred and five degrees<\/a> Fahrenheit, Bordeaux hit 108.5, and Gascony reached 111.7. The Eiffel Tower and the Louvre closed early, the museum explaining that its building is \u201cnot sufficiently adapted to climate change.\u201d A nuclear plant in southwestern France shut down a reactor because the river water used to cool it was too warm. Dozens of young people, including a twenty-one-year-old professional footballer, drowned while seeking relief in open water; three French children died in broiling cars. Some Parisians took refuge in air-conditioned hotels.<\/p>\n The fact that rooms were available during Europe\u2019s prime vacation season suggests trouble for its nearly three-trillion-dollar tourism industry, a hefty share of the Continent\u2019s G.D.P. More visitors are giving up on summer holidays in cities that feel like saunas and booking \u201ccoolcations\u201d in Iceland, Norway, or Denmark. In one survey, more than half of travellers said that they had avoided particular destinations because of extreme weather or natural disasters. A 2023 European Commission study forecast \u201ca clear north-south pattern in tourism demand changes\u201d that \u201cbecomes more pronounced for higher warming scenarios,\u201d signalling growing economic consequences for Madrid, Lisbon, Athens, and Milan.<\/p>\n \u201cTravelling to European cities is about cultural experience,\u201d Daniel Scott, a scholar of tourism at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, told me. \u201cWhether it\u2019s Paris, Barcelona, or Rome, you amble around, sightseeing, street shopping, taking a riverboat tour, going to a museum, a restaurant, a caf\u00e9. Most of that time, you\u2019re outside.\u201d Climate change increasingly turns pleasure trips into exercises in escaping pain. \u201cWhen I\u2019m in Europe, I always notice how many people crowd under trees and shaded areas,\u201d Scott said. \u201cBut at some attractions, like the Acropolis, there\u2019s no way to avoid the blazing sun. On especially hot days, they\u2019ve got the Red Cross giving out water, medics pre-positioned because they know many people are going to be in trouble when they come down.\u201d<\/p>\n