As temperatures climbed past 40 degrees Celsius across southern Europe this summer, scientists say such extreme heat is increasing due to human-caused climate change – Image: Tiziana Fabi/AFP
Some political messaging denies the role of human-caused climate change in this summer’s extreme heat. The science tells a different story.
As a summer of European extreme heat draws to a close, politicians are looking back at the toll. Germany recorded around 14,000 heat-related deaths, almost two-thirds in one scorching week of June alone. A Dutch bank estimated summer heat will cost the EU €180 billion ($209 billion) in lost GDP. And in June, European farmers lost approximately 9 million tons in grain crops.
Climate change, long a politically charged topic, has become a daily reality for people around the world. These effects and more are making it increasingly difficult to challenge what people are seeing with their own eyes.
Yet that hasn’t stopped the global populist right from trying. Richard Tice, deputy leader of the UK’s far-right Reform Party said “climate change has always happened, it always will,” adding that it was arrogant to try to stop it. He encouraged the British public to enjoy the heat.
In the United States, Harriet Hageman, a Republican politician and potentially Wyoming’s next senator, told far-right channel Real America’s Voice that Europe’s heatwave was business as usual. “It’s called summer. Some years are hotter than others and some years are colder than others,” she said. “But that’s just the cyclical nature of weather.”
And Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party told a journalist in recent days that it’s been a “completely normal summer.” He dismissed climate change as “hype.”
But claims like these don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.
A pharmacy thermometer in Cologne hit a record-breaking 42.2°C as last month ranked among the two warmest ever recorded globally – Image: teutopress/picture alliance
As NASA states plainly: “Scientific evidence continues to show that human activities (primarily the human burning of fossil fuels) have warmed Earth’s surface and its ocean basins, which in turn have continued to impact Earth’s climate.”
This was not ‘a completely normal summer’
This summer has been historically hot. Independent climate monitoring bodies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US, the Copernicus Climate Change Service in the European Union and the Japan Meterological Agency, all called last month either the joint-warmest or joint-second warmest month on record.
The conditions have led energy plants to halt production, outdated concrete motorways blowing up, and older buildings overheating during the day and barely cooling down at night — threatening inhabitants with exposure to heat stress.
The extreme heat was felt almost everywhere on the globe. According to NOAA’s data, it was the warmest July ever for North America, Africa and Asia.
The continental United States just surpassed its warmest July records. They were previously set in 1936, during the infamous Dust Bowl that scorched the US Great Plains with extreme temperatures, and in 2012, when North America suffered an extreme heatwave.
And the daily average sea surface temperature hit its highest level since records began in 1979 — reaching 21.1 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) this month. That’s a result of both human-driven warming as well as El Nino, a climate cycle that weakens trade winds and warms tropical Pacific surface temperatures.
How climate change supercharged this summer’s fires
In Spain, the far-right Vox party said fires — which burned more than 254,000 hectares of land across the country this season — were not connected to climate change.
Yet experts agree rising global temperatures played a major role in the intense wildfire season that also scorched large parts of France and Canada. That’s because extreme heat creates ideal conditions for wildfires to start and spread.
Scientists have established a clear connection between hotter temperatures and the likelihood of wildfires – Image: Umit Bektas/REUTERS
A field of climate research called attribution science explores the extent to which climate change exacerbates extreme weather events like this summer’s wildfires. Using models, researchers compare the likelihood and intensity of an event in today’s climate with a simulated world in which there is no human-caused warming.
Analyses done this summer show that hotter global temperatures created conditions that made the wildfires in Spain 20 times more likely to happen, and twice as probable in France.
This is due to a phenomenon known as weather whiplash, where ecosystems swing dramatically between wet and dry conditions.
When the planet warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, rainfall is intensified, and plants grow. Then, in summer, that same warm atmosphere draws water from soil and plants, worsening drought and drying out vegetation, turning it into the perfect fuel for fires.
“We know — and this is mathematically proven — that the probability of having fire weather that can sustain and create this kind of event has been altered by climate change,” Francesca Di Giuseppe, a fire forecast project coordinator at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, told DW about this summer’s fires in Spain and France.
Climate change’s ripple effects
Overall, this summer has left its mark in numerous ways that are impossible to ignore.
Bodies of water across Europe are drying out under the intense heat. Parts of the Rhine, Danube and Po rivers have fallen to historically low levels, making it impossible for ships to pass through in some spots.
Drought and heat have pushed the Rhine to historic lows, forcing cargo ships to carry lighter loads – Image: Martin Meissner/AP Photo/picture alliance
This has a number of knock-on effects. Drinking water costs could rise dramatically as much of Germany’s clean water first passes through reed-filled riverbanks that are crucial for filtration.
Supply chains are also be disrupted, as vessels can’t carry as much cargo when water levels are lower, increasing prices across the economy in products like steel or petroleum.
In America, drought conditions are wreaking havoc on crops and livestock. In June, the US Department of Agriculture said the 10-month stretch from August 2025 to May 2026 was the nation’s driest period since 1976-77.
Now, 59% of the country’s sorghum is being grown in areas experiencing drought. More than half the nation’s cattle production and almost two-thirds of spring wheat production is happening under water scarcity.
Such conditions can put direct strain on the country’s food supply, increase prices and threaten rural livelihoods.
By any measurement — thermometers, drought maps, or death tolls — and in much of the world, this summer has been historically extreme.
DW.com/NAN 04-09-26
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