Face of Nation : Record-shattering temperatures are scorching much of Europe this week as searing heat from North Africa overspreads the normally mild continent.
Germany broke its all-time heat record for June on Wednesday when the temperature soared to 101.5 degrees in Coschen, which is about 65 miles southeast of Berlin, according to the German meteorological service.
Authorities in Germany also imposed speed limits on some autobahns amid fears of buckling road surfaces, and some French schools stayed closed as a precaution.
Both Poland (100.8 degrees) and the Czech Republic (102) also set June high temperatures on Wednesday.
Red and orange alerts have been issued in several European countries, including in parts of France, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and Belgium, to warn about the dangerously high temperatures, according to MeteoAlarm.eu. Some of these nations could set June record highs by the weekend.
Professor Hannah Cloke, a natural-hazards researcher at Britain’s University of Reading, said the heat along with a buildup of humidity is a “potentially lethal combination. Children, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions are particularly at risk,” she said.
Early-summer heat waves are particularly dangerous, the Weather Channel said, since people have not had time to adapt to the seasonal heat.
Several locations in France topped 104 degrees on Wednesday, which is warmer than the 103 degree high forecast in Phoenix. Temperatures in France are expected to approach 110 degrees in southern parts of the country by Thursday and Friday, the Weather Channel said. That’s not far from the country’s all-time record high of 111.4 degrees, set on Aug. 12, 2003.
The heat could also be a problem for anyone attending Women’s World Cup matches taking place in France through next week, AccuWeather said.
In eastern Germany, police pulled over a moped rider who was wearing nothing but a helmet, AccuWeather reported. When officers questioned the man about his complete lack of clothing, he cited high temperatures as his motivation for riding in the buff, according to a post that included photos of the naked rider shared by the police on Twitter.
Sweden’s Melinda Cuzner, while vacationing in Copenhagen, Denmark, called the heat wave “worrisome. It’s scary. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Europe is currently under a historically strong upper ridge,” Mika Rantanen, a meteorologist in Finland, said Wednesday. According to the Capital Weather Gang, an upper ridge is the technical term for an extensive zone of high pressure or heat dome.
Although the World Meteorological Organization said “it is premature to attribute the unusually early heat wave to climate change,” extreme heat waves are among the clearest connections to human-caused climate change, numerous studies have indicated, including one from the National Academy of Sciences.
