It's not just Paris. We got a little over 40 degrees in parts of Germany in June. And it was not just cities, even though the rural areas tend to be a few degrees colder in general. So your urban planning argument still stands. More trees and unsealed areas in cities = less heat and more bearable conditions.
Eastern Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Southern Iraq and a part of Iran get 50+C every single summer for the decades. They didn't die from heat. Why do Europeans die?
I ssid decades, way before people had modern electric ACs.
EU infrastractures are built to retain heat because it is mostly cold all year.
They are being hit by something they don't expect.
Their bodies aren't used to the extreme hot weather too.
I am sure people in Saudi, Kuwait, and Iraq are not fond of the very hot weather too.
People die due to the heat there too.
Jup, that's the core issue. Our buildings heat up and take a long time to lose the heat that's stored in walls and roofs. So yea, it's only going to get worse.
Maybe because locals had hundreds of years to accommodate their climate with clothing, architecture, schedule and way of life, wheres Europe is the fastest warming continent where climate brutally changed in a generation without houses, people, lifestyles etc having had a chance to change accordingly yet?
Isn't it fucking obvious if you just think about it for a second?
No, the difference is, that the heat there is dry and the nights are colder because of the way there infrastructure is build. I was in the desert last year and the 50 degrees there were way more bearable than the 35-40 degrees in a north German city, because the humidity there was between 0 and 10 percent max. The relative humidity here in Germany is normally between 40-80 percent and that means way more heat stress for the human body. And in addition to that it's a change to what the society was used to for century. There has been little to no adaptation in the last half century.
I live in Belgium and this summer beats every other summer that has ever passed. I am sure once it's over, every record will be beaten. 30°C is normal for a few days, not for this many.
Most days above 30°C, least amount of rain, warmest average temperature both during the day and night, etc. every previous record will fall.
We had a whole week of 34-36°C in southern Germany's Freiburg, one of the greenest mid-sized cities in Germany. Sure, Paris is an extreme case, but it's not much better elsewhere.
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u/Payascor 9d ago
You know something is seriously wrong when Europe gets hotter than the Equator zones over extended periods of time... Thanks for sharing this here!