Europe is in the grip of a deadly heatwave as temperatures reach highs of a staggering 48C, sparking concern for Brits planning to head off abroad on their holidays this summer.
The Cerberus heatwave has seen sweltering conditions across the likes of France, Greece and Turkey, with wildfires also breaking out in Spain and Croatia due to the extreme heat. However, it’s a different story over on home soil, with temperatures struggling to reach the low 20s this week and the sun nowhere to be seen for many parts of the country.
The UK has seen very different weather to the rest of Europe in recent days, including heavy rain and thunderstorms – but a leading climate scientist has said that we are “lucky” this is the case. Professor Hannah Cloke OBE told The Mirror: “I think the position of the jet stream has meant that we’ve got this cool weather and I know that many people are complaining about it, because they’d like to have a little bit more sunshine.
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“But actually I think we’re very, very lucky because otherwise we’d be sitting in that hot African air. That’s really very dangerous indeed. The jet stream just happens to be in in this position, which is bringing that cooler weather across the UK.”
The jet stream is a core of strong winds around five to seven miles above the Earth’s surface, blowing from west to east, the Met Office explains. The jet stream flows high overhead and causes changes in the wind and pressure at that level – this affects things nearer the surface, such as areas of high and low pressure, and therefore helps shape the weather we see.
Professor Cloke added that the UK is “certainly not ready” for the extreme heat currently sweeping across Europe. “It’s in a society where we don’t have the right housing, we don’t have the right infrastructure, the right conditions to deal with some of these very, very high temperatures,” she warned.
While the scientist explained that the reason the UK has not been affected by the scorching heat in other countries is due to the position of the jet stream, she went on to say that this doesn’t mean we can rule out a heatwave of our own before the end of the summer. “We have some predictions of what’s going to happen for the rest of the summer, but they are quite uncertain,” she admitted.
“Weather forecasting systems are not quite that good yet. So we have to prepare anyway for the certainly, whether that’s next summer, or the summer after that.” However, while many of us Brits hope for sunshine amid the dreary and damp weather we are usually blessed with, a heatwave is not something that should be taken lightly.
“Heatwaves are nearly always fatal. It’s not always as visible, like a roaring flood that kind of sweeps people away, or traps people in tunnels. That’s horrific. It really does silently kill,” Professor Cloke said.
“So we do see hundreds, sometimes thousands of people die, so thousands of people died in the heatwave in the UK last time.” The expert added that an estimated 61,000 people died in heatwaves across Europe last summer.
With temperatures on the rise across the globe, Professor Cloke said that the situation must be a trigger to take urgent action to combat climate change. “As a climate scientist, I’m frightened by this. These temperatures are very high. We have seen them coming,” she said.
“They all were as we’ve been predicting, we know that this is going to get worse and worse in the future as well. So this is just really the beginning of some of these extreme weather events.”
