Europe’s record-breaking heatwave is entering a second phase, easing across the western half of the continent even as it intensifies over Italy, Greece and the Balkans, with forecasters warning a fresh bout of extreme heat could return to Spain within days.

WHAT HAPPENED

Cooler Atlantic air and thunderstorms have begun moving in from the west, bringing relief to Spain, France and the Benelux countries after more than a week of record-shattering temperatures, according to meteorological tracking services monitoring the event. Italy is bearing the brunt of the heat’s eastward shift, with temperatures peaking around 40 degrees Celsius across the center and north of the country on Monday and 18 cities, including Rome, Milan, Florence, Turin and Venice, placed under the highest-level red alert. The heat is expected to push further into Greece and the Balkans in the coming days, with Romania, Hungary and the western Balkans likely to see the hottest conditions around July 1 and 2.

The shifting heat dome has already triggered new wildfires near Athens and on several Aegean islands, adding fire risk to a list of impacts that has included buckling highways, strained power grids and overwhelmed emergency services across the continent over the past two weeks. European fire monitors have flagged very high wildfire risk across Italy, the western Balkans and parts of Spain as dry conditions persist. Forecasters say the relief reaching Western Europe will not be permanent: a second hot spell is expected to build over Spain and Portugal beginning around July 4, with inland Andalusia potentially approaching 44 to 46 degrees Celsius, a level that would rival or exceed the peak temperatures recorded earlier this month.

The human toll from the heatwave’s first phase has continued to come into sharper focus. The World Health Organization has estimated more than 1,300 excess deaths across Europe since June 21, including roughly 1,000 in France and 327 attributed to heat in Spain, figures officials caution will likely rise further as more complete mortality data is processed. Researchers with World Weather Attribution, an international scientific collaboration, have concluded the event would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, finding that a comparable heatwave would have been several degrees cooler had it occurred in 1976.

WHY IT MATTERS

The heatwave’s eastward migration illustrates a pattern climate scientists say is becoming more common: rather than a single, contained heat event, Europe is increasingly experiencing rolling waves of extreme heat that shift across the continent over multiple weeks, straining different countries’ health and emergency systems in succession. The prospect of a second major heat spell hitting Spain within days, on the heels of a heatwave that has already killed well over 1,000 people, underscores researchers’ warnings that what was once considered a rare, generational event is now occurring on a near-annual basis. The World Health Organization has said European homes, workplaces and schools were largely not built to withstand sustained extreme heat, and the recurring nature of this summer’s heat waves is likely to intensify pressure on governments to adopt longer-term adaptation measures rather than treating each heatwave as an isolated emergency.

WHAT’S NEXT

Meteorologists expect the heat to peak over Romania, Hungary and the western Balkans around July 1 and 2 before beginning to ease, while monitoring agencies continue to track the wildfire risk building across Italy, Greece and Spain. Spain and Portugal face the most immediate concern looking ahead, with forecasters warning a second intense heat spell could arrive as soon as July 4 and last through roughly July 10. Public health agencies across the continent are expected to continue updating excess mortality figures from the heatwave’s first phase in the coming weeks as more complete data becomes available.

Originally published on HNGN