All over the world, scorching heat with no sign of relief

Power plants are running in the United States and China, the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, which are struggling to meet demand for air conditioning. Wildfires are raging in southern Europe and Canada, with more than a month of peak fire season remaining. Explosive thunderstorms, fierce monsoons and extreme heat wreak havoc and threaten lives on three continents.

And little relief is in sight, from the mountains and megacities of Asia to the lakes and rivers of Europe or the plains, forests and suburbs of North America. In the short term, meteorologists predicted more intense heat and extreme weather in the coming month.

In the long run, scientists say, climate change is making heat waves hotter, more frequent and longer; making wildfires bigger and more intense; that affect air quality, rainfall and drought – reaching every corner of the earth, driven by the burning of fossil fuels by humans.

“The difficult is not over yet,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece said on Thursday. In his country, wildfires have burnt dozens of homes and thousands of hectares of forest in the past week, and so have temperatures prediction to reach 113 degrees Fahrenheit or 45 degrees Celsius in the central region of Thessaly on Sunday.

A fire service spokesman, Ioannis Artopios, said the intense dry heat created “even more difficult” conditions for Greek firefighters. Similarly, parched conditions have fueled Canada’s record burning season, where more than 25 million acres have burned so far this year.

With the heat expected to continue, parts of southern Europe are bracing for the next wave, even though temperatures have eased – albeit only slightly – in recent days.

have Italian hospitals reported an increase in heat-related emergencies as temperatures crept to 100 Fahrenheit, or 38 degrees Celsius. Unions, government officials and business people gathered to discuss how to protect workers from the heat, which creates dangerous conditions on construction sites, asphalt and city streets. A company executive compared the impact of the heat on workers to the Covid-19 pandemic and called for “extraordinary measures” in response.

In Spain, the authorities officially declared an end to the heat emergency on Thursday. But the country’s weather monitor warned people not to “let our guard down” as the risk of wildfires remains high in much of the country in the hot, dry conditions.

Some health officials around the world have started linking deaths to extreme heat this year. Heat and humidity have been particularly devastating in northern Mexico, where more than 100 people have died this year from heat-related causes, according to reports from the federal health ministry.

In Asia, extremely high temperatures have been exacerbated by an intense monsoon season that has already claimed more than 100 lives in India, South Korea and Japan, with the full death toll likely to be significantly higher.

Heavy rainfall has replaced intense heat in India in recent weeks, particularly in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The torrential downpours have triggered massive landslides and flash floods, killing at least 130 people in the past 26 days in northern India.

An Indian government report in April foreshadowed such an outcome, warning that “with global warming uncontrolled, the likelihood of compound extremes, such as the simultaneous occurrence of droughts and heat waves, is likely to increase.” Droughts can make flash floods more likely because the soil becomes less absorbent.

Heat waves in India normally occur before the monsoon season, from March to June. But this year, temperatures have remained extremely high for much longer, reflecting the steady warming trend of recent years. While temperatures of 91 degrees or more were recorded on an average of 70 days per year between 1961 and 1990, between 1991 and 2022 there were an average of 89 days that reached that goal.

Another heat wave continued to ravage much of China on Friday, breaking records across the country.

The extreme western region of Xinjiang has been particularly hard hit. Temperatures on Sunday in a remote desert village reached 126 degrees (52 degrees Celsius), reportedly breaking the record for the highest temperature in China. Parts of Xinjiang were expected to continue to see triple-digit temperatures official pressand the authorities said yes watchful for possible forest fires.

Late July is historically the hottest time of the year in southern China, and officials there warned that high humidity would make the temperature appear almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the actual readings.

China’s largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, began its dry season on Thursday, the earliest since records began in the 1950s. according to authorities in Jiangxi province.

And in northern China, several cities, including Beijing, have broken records for most days in a year above 95 degrees, though the downpours that began Thursday evening were expected to finally bring some relief.

But the storms brought their own concerns as officials warned of possible flash flooding around the capital. Two years ago, the city of Zhengzhou, in Central China, recorded the most recorded rainfall in one hour in the country, according to state media. The downpours killed at least 300 people.

Chinese power plants recently broke their own records for generating electricity — burning more coal, a major contributor to global warming, to meet demand for energy air conditioning — and Chinese leaders this week rejected an overture from the US to push for tougher climate action.

There was similar demand for electricity in the United States, where more than a quarter of the population experienced dangerous heat Thursday, according to a New York Times analysis of daily weather and population data.

Late Thursday evening, the operator of the California power grid has a emergency alert urging people to save electricity because high temperatures put pressure on the system. In Phoenix, temperatures reached 116 degrees on Thursday, extending the city’s record streak to 21 consecutive days with temperatures of 110 degrees or higher.

Severe storms, particularly in the southeastern United States, have further damaged the energy grid. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power Thursday as strong thunderstorms knocked out power lines, leaving 150,000 homes without electricity in Georgia and western Tennessee, and causing blackouts to 52,000 homes and businesses.

Forecasters said the current heat wave is expected to last all weekend in the Deep South and Southeast and into the Southwest into next week. Nearly 80 million Americans are expected to experience temperatures above 105 degrees in the coming days, according to the National Weather Service.

Another US agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, predicted unusually high temperatures for next month across most of the country, almost everywhere except the northern Great Plains. On Thursday, NOAA reported that last month was the warmest June on Earth since global temperature records began in 1850.

Reporting contributed by Niki Kitsantonis from Athens, Constant Meheut from Paris, Gaia Pianigiani from Rome, Suhasini Raj from New Delhi and Viviane Wang from Beijing. Li You contributed to research from Shanghai.