Europe is bracing for a hotter-than-normal August following a series of successive heatwaves, with seasonal forecasts indicating that above-average temperatures are likely across the continent, particularly in the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe.
According to Euronews, much of Europe has struggled to cope with temperatures exceeding 40°C (104°F ) in recent weeks, creating favorable conditions for the devastating wildfires that have burned vast areas in France and Spain and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.
Early forecasts suggest there is little immediate relief in sight, with additional heatwaves remaining possible during August.
Mediterranean Expected to See Strongest Heat
Ioanna Vergini, founder of the weather forecasting platform WFY24, told Euronews Earth that all seasonal forecasts released in early July indicate August will be warmer than normal across Europe.
“The strongest and most reliable heat signal is located over the Mediterranean and southeastern Europe,” she said.
The forecast includes recurring “heat zones” affecting the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Greece, and parts of the Balkans.
Vergini added that the exceptionally warm Mediterranean Sea is influencing nighttime temperatures over land, with many locations experiencing particularly warm nights rather than only extreme daytime heat.
According to WFY24 forecasts for the first days of August, nighttime temperatures are expected to remain above 20°C (68°F) in cities including Naples, Barcelona, Rome, Valencia, Nice, Thessaloniki, Split, and Athens.
These conditions are classified as “tropical nights,” which can increase the risk of severe heat stress, particularly among vulnerable populations.
Even northern Europe is expected to experience unusually warm conditions. The UK’s Met Office has warned that temperatures could reach 35°C (95°F) during August, with periods of hot weather and heatwaves likely, especially across southern parts of the country.
Scientists Explain Climate Change’s Role
Scientists say advances in meteorological and climate data have significantly improved their ability to assess how global warming influences extreme weather events through a process known as “extreme event attribution.”
Rather than asking whether climate change directly caused a heatwave, attribution studies examine how rising global temperatures have altered the likelihood and intensity of such events.
Researchers compare how frequently an extreme event occurs today with how often it would likely have occurred in a world without human-induced climate change. They also analyze how climate change has affected the characteristics of an event, such as making a heatwave significantly more intense.
One rapid attribution analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) examined the hottest three-day period across a large part of Europe during late June.
Scientists concluded that both daytime highs and nighttime temperatures during that event would have been “almost impossible” for that time of year in 1976, just 50 years earlier.
The analysis also found that an equivalent heatwave occurring half a century ago would have been approximately 3.5°C cooler than the one recorded last month.
Researchers say they have a high degree of confidence in the science linking climate change to extreme heat because of the extensive observational data now available.
Dr. Kipping said ongoing fossil fuel emissions are directly responsible for the disruptions people experience in their homes, schools, and workplaces.
“The pace of change is astonishing. Every few years we see temperature records broken across Europe. This year, it happened in consecutive months,” he said.
Rising Death Toll From Heat
Attribution studies are also being used to estimate the human impact of extreme heat.
An analysis by Imperial College London, the UK’s Met Office, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine combined weather observations, climate models, and excess mortality studies to evaluate two recent European heatwaves.
Researchers estimated that daytime maximum temperatures were between 3°C and 4°C higher than they would have been without global warming, contributing to an estimated 10,000 additional deaths.
Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the science is unequivocal.
“Extreme heat is breaking records across Europe and the science is absolutely clear about why: climate change is accelerating because of the world’s continued reliance on burning coal, oil, and gas,” he said.
Heat Domes and Other Weather Drivers
Scientists note that while climate change provides the long-term warming background, specific atmospheric patterns help trigger individual heatwaves.
One such phenomenon is the “heat dome,” which forms when a high-pressure system develops in the upper atmosphere, compressing and heating the air beneath it. The resulting dome traps heat near the surface, often allowing hot conditions to persist.
Normally, weather systems move these high-pressure areas, but because heat domes extend deep into the atmosphere, they can become nearly stationary.
A 2025 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that atmospheric patterns associated with extreme weather, including heat domes and flooding, have nearly tripled since the 1950s because of human-caused climate change.
A separate 2023 analysis by Climate Central concluded that climate change made a heat dome responsible for temperatures reaching 48°C (118°F) in parts of Mexico and the southern United States at least five times more likely.
El Niño’s Influence
The El Niño climate pattern, which officially began earlier this year in the tropical Pacific according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), can also contribute to extreme weather.
El Niño develops when sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, often disrupting weather patterns across the tropics.
It is associated with increased risks of flooding in parts of South America, East Africa, Central Asia, and the southern United States, while also increasing the likelihood of drought and wildfires in much of Australia, northern South America, and countries such as Indonesia.
Scientists emphasize, however, that El Niño’s warming effect is relatively modest, typically increasing average global temperatures by around 0.2°C.
By comparison, human-induced climate change has already raised global average surface temperatures by approximately 1.3°C to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The report notes that 2025 became the third-warmest year ever recorded despite the cooling influence of La Niña, underscoring the dominant role of long-term global warming.
Pollution Reduction Not the Main Cause
Following Europe’s exceptionally hot start to summer, some reports suggested that reduced air pollution was responsible for the recent heatwaves.
According to Euronews, that claim was circulated online by Richard Tice, deputy leader of the far-right Reform UK party, and used to criticize climate policies aimed at achieving net-zero emissions.
The argument was based on a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, although the research did not examine the most recent European heatwaves.
Scientists acknowledge that cleaner air can reduce the cooling effect of aerosols, which reflect or absorb sunlight.
However, Professor Erich Fischer, a climatologist at ETH Zurich, told Carbon Brief that it is incorrect to describe reduced pollution as the cause of Europe’s heatwaves.
He said heatwaves are driven by persistent high-pressure systems but have become much more frequent and intense because they now develop in a climate that is significantly warmer than it was a century ago due to greenhouse gas emissions.
Fischer added that the study shows greenhouse gas-driven summer warming had previously been partially masked by cooling aerosols, and that the full extent of warming over European summers is only now becoming more apparent as air pollution declines.
