标签： Europe

A punishing high-pressure heat dome has trapped an extraordinary mass of hot air from North Africa over much of Western Europe this week, driving temperatures across the continent above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and triggering a wave of all-time temperature records — even though the peak of the summer heat season is still weeks away.

What makes this heat event particularly anomalous is its timing: extreme heat of this severity has arrived far earlier than the mid-summer window when such conditions are normally expected. The combination of soaring peak temperatures and unusually high overnight readings, paired with stifling humidity, has created conditions far more akin to a tropical climate than the temperate weather the region typically experiences in June. Day after night after day, existing national and regional temperature records have fallen one after another.

The hot air mass originating in North Africa has spread across Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, bringing searing conditions to regions that rarely see prolonged extreme heat. Unlike many warmer climate regions, most buildings and homes across these countries lack widespread, accessible air conditioning, leaving millions of residents without a reliable way to escape the oppressive heat.

While meteorologists forecast that temperatures will gradually cool in the coming days, climate experts warn that the worst of the 2024 European summer is still ahead, with the historically hottest months of July and August still to come. To put the scale of this early heat wave in perspective, a series of staggering record-breaking measurements illustrate its unprecedented breadth and intensity:

In the small southwestern French town of Pissos, observers recorded a high of 43.8 degrees Celsius (110.8 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, making it the hottest temperature recorded across France during this heat event. For context, this reading is far above the average June high for the region of 25 degrees Celsius.

Across the entire country of France, the Meteo France national weather agency confirmed that the 24-hour average temperature hit 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) at 30 monitoring stations on Wednesday. This marks the first time in recorded French weather history that a nationwide 24-hour average has reached this threshold, officially making Wednesday the hottest day France has ever experienced. Unlike heat events that only push daytime highs in small regions, this average — measured across both day and night hours across dozens of locations — confirms that this heat wave is far more geographically extensive than any previous heat event on record. In response to the crisis, French authorities placed more than three-quarters of the country under red-level extreme heat alerts, another first in the nation’s history.

Across the English Channel, the United Kingdom also logged a new milestone on Thursday: a reading of 36.4 degrees Celsius (97.5 Fahrenheit) in Somerset, southern England, making it the hottest June day ever recorded in the country. UK meteorological services have extended red heat warnings for most of central and southern England, as well as Wales, urging residents to stay hydrated and avoid unnecessary outdoor activity.

Even overnight temperatures have reached record levels, leaving vulnerable populations with no relief from the swelter. Germany’s national weather service reported that temperatures did not drop below 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.2 Fahrenheit) in Bad Bergzabern, a town in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate. That reading matches the all-time record for Germany’s warmest night, originally set in July 2019. Across the Channel in Plymouth, England, overnight temperatures only fell to 23.0 degrees Celsius (73.4 Fahrenheit), a provisional new record for the warmest June night in the country. High humidity has trapped heat close to the ground across the region, keeping temperatures elevated well after sunset for millions of people.

The extreme heat has already claimed lives. In France alone, at least 40 people have died in drowning incidents over the past week as residents flocked to rivers and lakes to cool off, ignoring repeated official warnings about the dangers of unsupervised swimming. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu confirmed that most of the victims were young people. Related heat-related hazards have spread across the continent, with organizers of Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix declaring an official heat hazard as the event proceeds amid scorching conditions. This extreme heat event also coincides with a landmark court ruling on climate change in Paris, adding a layer of urgency to ongoing policy debates about climate adaptation and mitigation across Europe.

Even Spain, a country familiar with summer heat, has faced extraordinary conditions. The northern Spanish village of Tama, long known for its cool, green Atlantic-facing landscape, hit an all-time record high of 43.7 degrees Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) earlier this week, a remarkable reading for a region that typically enjoys temperate summer weather. This heat wave has extended far into Spain’s normally cooler northern Atlantic coastal regions, areas that rarely face extreme heat warnings.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Pan Pylas in London, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, James Ellingworth in Duesseldorf, Germany, and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona.

After more than four years of full-scale conflict, Ukraine’s accelerating long-range drone campaign targeting Russian territory is forcing Moscow to shift critical air defense assets to protect high-priority sites, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in his Wednesday evening daily address.

Zelenskyy outlined that Russian military command has repositioned large volumes of air defense missile systems to three core locations: the Russian capital Moscow, the town of Valdai 300 miles northwest of Moscow where President Vladimir Putin maintains an official residence, and the Kerch Strait Bridge — a critical logistical link that connects the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula to mainland Russia. “In the Moscow region alone, they have amassed hundreds of launchers,” Zelenskyy stated, adding that close to 90 additional launchers have been pulled from other Russian regions and redeployed to Valdai to reinforce defenses there.

This redeployment comes in response to a months-long escalation of Ukraine’s aerial strikes against Russian military infrastructure and energy sites across the country. Kyiv’s successful attacks have already triggered widespread fuel shortages, disrupted Russian army supply chains, slowed Moscow’s forward momentum in the invasion, and left senior Russian leadership unsettled. Recent Ukrainian drone operations have reached as far as Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and Putin’s birthplace, as Kyiv works to cut supply lines to Russian forces occupying Crimea, which Russia illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014. Zelenskyy emphasized that the redistribution of Russian air defenses leaves vast swathes of other Russian territory exposed to future strikes by Ukraine’s modern long-range drones, which now have an operational range of more than 900 miles.

The escalation of Ukraine’s campaign comes as diplomatic efforts remain deadlocked. Zelenskyy noted that the continued Russian military pressure on Ukraine stems from Putin’s refusal to end the war and engage in good-faith negotiations for a just peace. Zelenskyy has already accepted the unconditional ceasefire proposal put forward by U.S. President Donald Trump, but Putin has rejected the offer, leaving a full year of U.S.-led peace talks with no meaningful progress.

In a surprising shift this week, Trump — who has previously been critical of Zelenskyy — praised the Ukrainian leader during a White House appearance Wednesday, calling him “courageous” and saying he is “doing pretty well” leading the war effort. After attending the recent G7 summit, Zelenskyy confirmed he secured pledges of continued Western military and political support, with promised aid set to further bolster Kyiv’s expanding drone campaign. He added that Ukraine’s ongoing operations, including those targeting supply lines to Crimea, are deliberately structured to force Russia to the negotiating table if international partners deliver the agreed-upon support. “We will quickly create conditions in which Russia will be forced to choose peace,” he said, noting that G7 leaders are fully aware of Ukraine’s requirements for this push.

Alongside developments on the strike campaign, Ukraine is closely monitoring potential shifts along its northern border with Belarus, which has long allowed Moscow to use its territory to support the invasion and hosts manufacturing facilities that back Russia’s war effort. Last week, Zelenskyy issued an ultimatum demanding Belarus disable signal repeaters on its territory that Kyiv says were used to guide Russian drone strikes on western Ukraine, threatening military action against the facilities if they remained operational. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy confirmed that Ukrainian intelligence has verified the repeaters have been turned off, but added that “there are many questions regarding Belarus” given its history of enabling Russia’s invasion.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War has assessed that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is walking a careful diplomatic line: he continues to delay and push back against growing Kremlin pressure to bring Belarus directly into the war, while maintaining outwardly neutral rhetoric toward Kyiv. In response to ongoing uncertainty, Ukraine has ordered mandatory evacuation for all communities in the Chernihiv border region starting July 1, and Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander General Oleksandr Syrskyi confirmed last week that Kyiv is strengthening northern border defenses, including standing up new dedicated army drone units for the front.

As Ukraine expands its strikes inside Russia, Moscow has continued its own bombardment of Ukrainian civilian and energy infrastructure. Overnight this week, Russia launched one ballistic missile and 90 long-range attack drones across Ukraine, Ukrainian air force officials confirmed. A drone strike on a civilian gas station in the northeastern Sumy region Thursday morning left four people injured, including two station employees, according to regional governor Oleh Hryhorov, who noted that Russian forces have targeted Sumy’s gas infrastructure 13 times in June alone. A separate overnight strike on a gas station in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia left one woman injured and damaged the facility, regional governor Ivan Fedorov reported.

For its part, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated that its air defense systems intercepted and downed 269 Ukrainian drones between late Wednesday and early Thursday, and multiple major Russian airports issued temporary flight restrictions overnight amid reported drone incursions.

As much of Western Europe grapples with record-shattering extreme heat that has upended daily life, a Paris court is preparing to deliver a groundbreaking ruling Thursday that could reshape corporate accountability for the climate crisis. The decision comes just 24 hours after France recorded its highest ever temperature, capping a weeks-long brutal heatwave that has forced red alert warnings across France, the United Kingdom and Spain, putting tens of millions of people at risk of heat-related illness.

The case before the court is the first of its kind globally, marking the first time France’s 2017 Corporate Duty of Vigilance Law will be applied to climate change. The legislation requires all large companies operating on French territory to map and prevent human rights abuses and environmental harm linked to their operations and supply chains. The lawsuit was first filed in 2020 by a coalition of four leading environmental and human rights NGOs — Notre Affaire à Tous, Sherpa, ZEA, and France Nature Environnement — joined by the city of Paris, against French energy giant TotalEnergies, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies and among the top historical contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Plaintiffs are demanding the court order TotalEnergies to cut its global oil production by 37% and its gas production by 25% by 2030, matching the emission reduction benchmarks required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the core target of the Paris Agreement. They are also calling for an immediate ban on all new fossil fuel development projects planned by the company. If the court rules in favor of the claimants, it will set a historic precedent for holding major carbon emitters legally responsible for their role in driving climate change.

This pivotal legal moment comes as Europe confronts the accelerating human and economic cost of rising global temperatures. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirms Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average, a trend that has held steady since the 1980s. Just this month, the World Health Organization’s European regional office released data showing more than 200,000 preventable heat-related deaths across the continent over the past four years, a death toll that is projected to rise as extreme heat events grow more frequent and intense.

The current heatwave has already disrupted daily life across Western Europe: iconic Paris landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum have cut back visiting hours to protect staff and visitors, while school and public transportation schedules have been disrupted across multiple countries. Scientific consensus confirms that human-caused climate change is directly linked to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme heat events, and the United Nations’ climate agency projects the next five years will almost certainly bring more broken global temperature records.

Thursday’s ruling is the latest in a growing wave of court decisions that are expanding legal obligations around climate action. In 2019, the Netherlands Supreme Court delivered the first major legal victory for climate activists, ruling that protection from climate harm is a fundamental human right and governments have a legal duty to protect their citizens. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights upheld this framework, ruling that nations are legally required to implement stronger protections against climate impacts. Most recently, the United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, ruled that countries can be found in violation of international law if they fail to take adequate action to protect the planet from climate change.

In a fresh escalation of tensions around one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, a projectile struck an unidentified cargo vessel traveling through a UN-endorsed alternative shipping corridor in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, British military officials confirmed. The attack came just hours after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued explicit threats barring vessels from using the unapproved route, leaving the international community scrambling to assess responsibility and the broader implications for global energy markets.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations, which monitors regional shipping security, reported that while the targeted vessel suffered structural damage, there were no reported casualties and no leakage of hazardous materials that would cause environmental damage off the Omani coast. Officials have not yet confirmed the identity of the ship’s operator or the source of the projectile, leaving key details of the incident unconfirmed as of Thursday evening.

The contested alternative shipping corridor was organized by Oman and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a United Nations body, to free hundreds of commercial vessels trapped in the Persian Gulf after Iran laid naval mines in the strait’s traditional central shipping lane. Iran placed the mines in the central corridor following a cross-border strike by the U.S. and Israel on Iranian assets on February 28, a move that cut daily shipping transits from a pre-conflict average of more than 130 to fewer than 40 at the lowest point of the crisis. Before the conflict, the central route carried roughly 20% of the world’s daily supply of oil and natural gas, giving Iran significant leverage over global energy markets amid ongoing negotiations with Washington.

Opening the new coastal corridor along the UAE and Omani coastlines is designed to reduce this leverage and ease mounting pressure on the fragile global economy, a core goal of the ongoing interim peace talks between the U.S. and Iran. Under a memorandum of understanding signed last week, the two sides have 60 days to hammer out final details of a tentative agreement covering everything from free navigation through the strait to the future of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is currently traveling through the Gulf region to reassure regional American allies of Washington’s commitment to security, reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to protecting the new corridor on Thursday. “If that [free transit] stops, then we’re going to have a problem,” Rubio told reporters ahead of meetings with Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers in Bahrain, the home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. “There is no part in this deal that’s undertaken that in any way undermines the security, the stability or the prosperity of any of our partners in the Gulf region,” he added. Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani thanked the U.S. for its continued support, noting “today we see a glimmer of hope for our region” while stressing that “it was critically important that Iran adheres to its obligations.”

Shipping data from recent days shows a steady increase in traffic through the new corridor, even as volumes remain well below pre-conflict levels. Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported that 125 vessels crossed the strait last week, up from just 33 the week prior, while S&P Global recorded 78 transits on Wednesday alone — the highest daily number since the outbreak of hostilities, but still far off the prewar average. “Opportunistic operators — and there are many of them — emboldened by the lower transit risk, or at least the perceived lower transit risk, have begun chasing the backlog of trapped cargoes,” explained Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List. Global shipping giant Maersk confirmed Thursday that one of its container vessels, the Maersk Baltimore, and a second chartered ship had successfully exited the strait via the new route that morning.

Iran has repeatedly rejected the new corridor as unauthorized, with the Revolutionary Guard’s naval branch issuing a fresh warning Thursday carried by state-run IRNA news agency. “The new route was established without notice or coordination with Iran, calling it “unacceptable and completely dangerous,” the statement read. “The only authorized route for passing through the Strait of Hormuz is the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vessel traffic outside these routes is extremely dangerous and prohibited. Violators will be dealt with.” On Wednesday, private security firm Ambrey reported that an Iranian Guards sailor radioed a warning to one passing tanker, saying: “You are in range of my missiles and maybe [I] fire on you.”

Despite the attack, global oil markets reacted with relative calm Thursday, with benchmark crude prices briefly dipping below $73 per barrel — the last pre-conflict price level — a signal that investors believe the broader diplomatic process remains on track. Still, the strike underscores the fragility of the tentative detente, which is already complicated by public sparring between U.S. and Iranian leaders, who have traded threats and claimed opposing concessions that the other side denies.

Tensions are also flaring on a second front in Lebanon, where a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants has begun to unravel in recent days. Israel confirmed that it targeted Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon this week, with Lebanese health officials reporting three civilian deaths in a Thursday strike on a vehicle. Hezbollah called the attack a clear violation of the ceasefire but has not yet launched retaliatory strikes, while the Israeli military had no immediate comment on the incident. The strike came as Lebanese and Israeli delegations visited Washington to discuss a proposed phased Israeli troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Israel’s military added that a reservist soldier was killed and another wounded in southern Lebanon on Thursday. Since the latest round of fighting began in March, more than 4,000 Lebanese have been killed in Israeli strikes, while 37 Israeli soldiers have died in combat in Lebanon or northern Israel.

This report contains contributions from Lee in Manama, Bahrain, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, and is aggregated from original Associated Press reporting.