People cool off in an urban beach at Madrid Rio park in Madrid, Wednesday. Hot air from Africa is bringing a heat wave to Europe, prompting health warnings about Sahara Desert dust. Photo / AP
People cool off in an urban beach at Madrid Rio park in Madrid, Wednesday. Hot air from Africa is bringing a heat wave to Europe, prompting health warnings about Sahara Desert dust. Photo / AP
An early summer heatwave across Europe is breaking monthly and — in some cities — all-time records, as the continent oven-bakes under dangerous temperatures soaring above 35C, driven by hot winds from the Sahara.
On social media, Europeans are posting memes of sinners burning in hell. A heat map for France, tweeted by a university meteorologist, appeared next to the Edvard Munch painting The Scream. A forecaster in Spain warned that an "inferno" was coming.
On the television news, the continent's weather reporters were standing in front of maps with swirling blobs of hot pink and blood red, illustrations of extreme heat.
Scientists in Europe are generally blaming human-induced climate change for such extreme weather events, while noting that no one warm spell can be blamed solely on the rise of greenhouse gases.
Photos of the jaguars swimming in the pool of the Zoo de Bordeaux-Pessac in southwestern France were trending. At the Mulhouse Zoo in northeastern France, the keepers were feeding the lemurs frozen raisin sorbet.
It's so hot in the Saxony region of Germany that officials are lowering the wide-open speed limits on the Autobahn as the roadways began to melt.
Blame the "Saharan Bubble" or the "Spanish Plume", its hot breath of Africa jetting into Europe, steered by a stagnant high-pressure zone responsible for the big Greenland melt event that has been breaking records for longevity. Scientists say extremes may be becoming more common in a warming world.
In Prague's city centre, visitors and locals clustered around a sprinkler truck to cool down.
Final exams for students in France were delayed a week due to the heatwave, while French President Emmanuel Macron promised "the whole Government is mobilised".
In 2003, caught unprepared by a brutal heatwave, an estimated 20,000 people died in Europe, most of them in France.
In Austria, the Health Ministry launched a 24/7 phone hotline for citizens interested in "the most important rules of conduct" to deal with the heat. The ministry urged Austrians to dilute fruit juices with water.
Speaking to Austria's public broadcaster, ORF, mental-health worker Josef Schorghofer proposed that Austria should consider copying Southern Europe's tradition of an extended lunch break.
Meaning: In a warming world, the prompt and punctual Austrians might take a siesta.
"We should reconsider our way of life and question if it is still adequate, given today's climate," Schorghofer said.
A man drinks as he cools off in the shade above Lyon, central France,. Photo / AP
Newspapers in Germany published guides on whether the heat meant that employees could simply skip work (Answer: No) and if wearing shorts at work was acceptable amid the heatwave (Answer: It depends).
In Switzerland, the heatwave also coincided with the first weeks of basic training for the country's new military conscripts. To prevent the recruits from overheating, Swiss officials require them to regularly fill in forms to document their hourly water consumption, an official told Swiss media.
In France, several elderly swimmers died, apparently of "thermal shock", after entering the cool seawater after broiling on land.
A man runs on a small path as the sun rises in Frankfurt, Germany. Photo / AP
In Germany, heated rows broke out over how much nudity to tolerate in the midst of the heatwave, which reached a record high of 38.6C on Thursday.
After a group of women took off their bikini tops in Munich last weekend to bathe along the banks of the city's Isar River, five security guards ordered them to put their tops back on, citing local public nudity prohibitions. In response, about two dozen women also took their tops off "out of solidarity", according to the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung. The security guards proceeded to call the police, who insisted the women cover their breasts.
The Greens party brought the case to the city council and initiated a discussion about what "nude" entails, whether topless bathing should be counted as such, and how much nudity Munich can bear.
"For me, it's incomprehensible if men can lie in the sun topless but not women," said the Greens' Dominik Krause, among the initiators of the council debate.
German police in the eastern state of Brandenburg, which neighbours Berlin, looked on nudity more kindly when they posted two pictures of a man wearing nothing but a helmet while riding his motor scooter.
A stork sits on a hay ball on a field in Bechingen, southern Germany. Photo / AP
On Twitter, the authorities asked for help finding captions. "Because we're speechless," the police wrote in the tweet, adding a sweating emoji and "for a bit of inspiration, a quote from the man: 'Is it hot or what?' "
Germany recorded its hottest ever June temperature on Thursday — 38.6C — breaking a 72-year record. Temperatures are projected to reach up to 39C tomorrow.
More than 500 firefighters were deployed to fight a wildfire — likely caused by chicken dung spontaneously combusting — in the Tarragona province of Catalonia.
Temperatures in some Spanish regions were expected to rise above 43C today.
Spain has long experience with heatwaves caused by hot African air sweeping over the Iberian peninsula. But the Spanish National Weather Agency reported they are getting more frequent and lasting longer.
This year is making headlines as temperatures will hit new highs, and there will be little relief overnight. Spanish authorities have issued yellow and orange alerts in 25 provinces, with temperatures forecast to reach 40C in half of Spain — and as high as 44C in Zaragoza, Girona and Logrono.
More than a dozen cities, including Madrid, will likely set records in the next three days.
