GENEVA (appro) World Meteorology (WMO).
“Temperatures in North America, Asia and across North Africa and the Mediterranean will be above 40°C for an extended number of days this week as the heat wave intensifies,” the expert from WMO at a press conference in Geneva.
Minimum temperatures overnight were also set to reach new highs, according to the WMO, creating risks of increased cases of heart attacks and deaths.
“While most of the attention is focused on daytime highs, it is nighttime temperatures that present the greatest health risks, especially for vulnerable populations,” the WMO said.
The researcher specializing in the study of heat waves said the high temperatures Europe is currently experiencing are bound to increase.
It is estimated that more than 60,000 Europeans died due to heat waves last year, this despite having some of the best early warning systems in the world. The WMO reported that the International Federation of the Red Cross is calling elderly people in Italy to find out how they are doing; in Greece it is distributing drinking water and on the Spanish island of La Palma it has improvised shelters for people affected by forest fires.
The UN weather agency said “new records” were possible in the coming days. The previous European maximum was 48.8 degrees Celsius reached in Sicily in August 2021 and the world record is 56.7 degrees Celsius in Death Valley, California in July 1913.
“We are in the early stages of this heat wave,” the WMO expert observed with concern, who, when questioned regarding climate change, stated that “these are not the normal meteorological systems of the past. You have to repair the climate to change it”.
In this sense, the UN estimated that as various areas of the northern hemisphere experience sweltering temperatures that have caused fires and threaten the health of the population, the world must prepare for more intense heat waves.
“Situations like these will continue to grow in intensity, and the world needs to prepare for more intense heat waves,” John Nairn, a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) expert on extreme heat, told reporters in Geneva.
“The recently declared El Niño phenomenon will only amplify the incidence and intensity of extreme heat waves,” he concluded.
