Europe endures hottest summer on record, devastating crops, lives

Brussels: Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2024, as intense heatwaves and severe droughts crippled agriculture and led to an increase in heat-related deaths across the continent.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) released a report on Friday, which showed that the average summer (June-August) temperatures across the European land were 1.54 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 baseline, surpassing the previous record of 1.34 degrees Celsius set in 2022, according to Xinhua news agency.

August 2024 ranked as the second-hottest on record in the region, with temperatures 1.57 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.

The summer heatwaves were the most severe in southern and eastern Europe, where temperatures frequently exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. In countries like Slovakia, Romania, and Croatia, the prolonged heat led to widespread droughts.

Croatia saw agricultural losses in its northeast, where two months of rainless conditions dried up rivers and cut crop yields by 30 per cent to 40 per cent, according to local estimates.

Heat waves and extreme weather conditions have caused crop failures for corn, sunflowers, soy, sugar beet, apples and other crops in Austria.

Austrian Hail Insurance, an insurance company, estimated in early September that drought would cause an economic loss of up to 150 million euros (US$166 million) to Austria’s agricultural sector this year.

In Hungary, over 390,000 hectares have been declared drought-damaged by early September, including 235,000 hectares of maize and 125,000 hectares of sunflower crops, according to Hungarian Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy, as reported by the Hungarian news agency MTI.

The extreme heat also ignited blazes across Portugal, Spain, and Greece, destroying vast areas of forest, while Croatia reported a 26-percent increase in wildfires compared to last year.

Heatwaves in Europe this summer also proved deadly. Spain recorded over 2,000 heat-related deaths in July and August, with the elderly particularly at risk, according to the Institute of Health Carlos III. This trend was seen across Europe, with Croatia attributing 500 additional deaths to the extreme heat.

A study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health estimated that more than 47,000 people died across Europe last summer due to extreme heat, making it the second deadliest year for heat-related deaths after 2022.

The extreme weather in Europe reflects broader global warming trends.

C3S’s data showed that August 2024 has tied with August 2023 as the hottest August on record globally, with the average surface air temperature hitting 16.82 degrees Celsius, 0.71 degrees Celsius above the average August temperature from 1991 to 2020.

The data also showed that August 2024 was 1.51 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels, marking the 13th time in the past 14 months that the global average surface air temperature has surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a critical threshold set by the Paris Agreement.

Meanwhile, year-to-date data indicates 2024 is on course to become the hottest year on record, as the global average temperature for January to August was 0.7 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average, the highest on record for this period.

C3S stressed that the average temperature anomaly for the remainder of the year would need to drop by at least 0.3 degrees Celsius to avoid surpassing 2023 as the hottest year — a highly unlikely scenario based on historical data.

“During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest boreal summer on record. This string of record temperatures is increasing the likelihood of 2024 being the hottest year on record,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

Burgess emphasized that the temperature-related extreme events seen this summer foreshadow more severe and destructive climate impacts unless urgent measures are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

IANS