The impact of June's extreme heat across France, Spain and other parts of Europe is likely to have been less damaging than in the past because governments put in place measures to cope after a deadly 2003 heat wave, scientists said Tuesday.
Governments were spurred into action by a European heat wave that year that caused the deaths of more than 35,000 people, and are now better prepared to keep their citizens safe, according to climate scientists at the World Weather Attribution group.
The international partnership analyzes the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events, from floods to droughts.
The scientists on Tuesday released a rapid assessment of three days of scorching heat in France from June 26-28, saying climate change made the event five times more likely and had boosted the temperature of the heat wave by about 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
The death toll linked to health effects from the recent heat wave will not be known for a few weeks, they said.
But Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, a senior researcher with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said heat action plans developed by governments had been shown to decrease mortality "substantially."
"We hope that this heat wave has become much less deadly than the 2003 heat wave because of the adaptation measures that have been taken," he told journalists.
Topic: Europe is Hotter But Less Deadly (Read 16546 times)
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June 08, 2018, 12:06:36 AM