Overview
- Record temperatures continued into Sunday, June 28, with provisional national highs and night-time records reported in Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Poland and at least 191 million people facing 35°C or warmer that day.
- France’s public health agency recorded about 1,000 excess deaths during the peak days of the episode and the World Health Organization reported more than 1,300 excess deaths across Europe since June 21.
- Rapid attribution studies from scientific groups found the heat and humidity would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, making such extremes far more likely now than decades ago.
- The heat has disrupted services and infrastructure through wildfires, damaged roads and railways, cancelled major events, and swollen ambulance and hospital demand while emergency measures such as Berlin’s water‑cannon cooling were used to help the public.
- Forecasters warn further spells of extreme heat for parts of Europe including a possible new UK hot spell in early July, highlighting short-term needs for cooling and worker protections and longer-term gaps in housing, green space and adaptation.