Britain must prepare for global heating far in excess of the level scientists have pegged as the limit of safety, the government's climate advisers have warned, as current plans to protect against extreme weather are inadequate. Heatwaves will occur in at least four of every five years in England by 2050, and time spent in drought will double. The number of days of peak wildfire conditions in July will nearly treble for the UK,
It was still only early April when farmhands and construction workers began to collapse from heat exhaustion in northern India, while daytime temperatures topped 40C (104F) in the capital, Delhi. Night-time record highs caused spikes in air conditioning use, overwhelming the electricity grid and causing protracted power outages as people struggled to keep cool. The blazing heat had come earlier than usual.
Because water is the heavyweight champion of heat storage. Water stores about 4.2 times the amount of energy than air per unit weight. Water is also about 800 times denser than air. That means the same volume of water can store about 3,400 times the energy of the equivalent volume of air. Hot water also evaporates more readily into air, and the amount of water air can hold increases exponentially with temperature.
Major energy producers increased the likelihood and intensity of heatwaves, according to research published in Nature. Using data from an international disaster database, a team developed a methodology to investigate how much anthropogenic climate change had influenced heatwaves. They conclude that many of these events would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change, and that nearly a quarter of the heatwaves recorded from 2000 to 2023 can be directly linked to the greenhouse-gas emissions from individual energy giants.
The UK's mean temperature from 1 June to 17 August is currently 16.2°C, which is 1.6°C above the long-term meteorological average.
Iran is experiencing its hottest week of the year, with temperatures exceeding 50C in some areas, alongside a severe water crisis due to five years of drought and lower rainfall.
Very high temperatures over several days with temperatures that do not drop at night cause the temperature of the tarmac to rise by several dozen degrees (on the surface), which put severe strain on the underground networks.
