The world is staggering under climate extremes this summer that have forced governments to take drastic steps to deal with record-setting heat and wildfire.
On Europe’s Danube River, Romania blew up a rock outcrop and Hungary sank two barges this month to keep the dwindling water flowing to nuclear power plants downstream.
France conducted its largest evacuation outside wartime when it ordered 220,000 people in July to leave an area in the country’s west where wildfire was raging.
After record-setting heat killed more than 20 this month in South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung ordered a massive government response. “Heat wave conditions once seen only in foreign news reports have now become our reality,” Lee said, according to Reuters.
“People are losing their lives,” Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union’s climate commissioner, told POLITICO. “If you add the truly dramatic cost of the wildfires but also of the droughts, for example, for shipping, I don’t think any one of us can be complacent.”
As this summer’s extreme weather has broken heat, wildfire and ocean temperature records across the planet, it has fed a cycle of destruction that has tested governments. Many have scrambled to take emergency steps.
Extreme heat in the U.S. and parts of Europe has amplified drought and stoked wildfires by drying out vegetation, making it highly flammable. While NOAA found average global temperatures this July were the hottest ever recorded for the month, the National Interagency Fire Center records show U.S. wildfires are on pace to burn more acres this year than in any year since daily recordkeeping began in 1994.
Sustained dry periods also are damaging agriculture, with poor harvests expected to drive up food prices in Europe. Droughts can lead to flash floods by creating a layer of encrusted dry soil that cannot absorb heavy rainfall, sending water directly into streams. Wildfires are stretching military resources as troops are deployed to battle blazes around the world.
“This has shocked a lot of people in France and in Europe,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources and a research partner at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in a live YouTube talk July 29. “What is so different about this year is the fact that France has experienced record-breaking heat wave after record-breaking heat wave after record-breaking heat wave.”
Warm waters and blistering air temperatures magnify each other in a vicious cycle. The ocean absorbs most of the heat in the atmosphere and grows warmer. At the same time, hotter oceans can raise temperatures in coastal areas and increase the risk of severe storms, wildfires and other extreme weather.
That’s what happened in Europe this year. Extreme heat also followed a particularly wet spring. The rain led to the growth of vegetation that later dried out in the heat, creating fuel for fires. Experts say the fires are affected more countries and lasting longer because of the exceptionally dry conditions. Fire fighting has been strained. France has faced a shortage of firefighters and firefighting equipment.
In the U.S., where President Donald Trump has dismissed climate change as a concern, he has cut government agencies that deal with disasters. Last week, the coordinating group that dispatches people and equipment to manage wildfires warned that it was facing a shortage of resources after operating at its highest level for more than a month.
Scientists have long warned of such severe climate impacts. Earlier this year, the United Nations introduced the term “water bankruptcy” to describe water sources, such as lakes, wetlands and underground aquifers, that are so depleted they can’t naturally rebuild to historical levels.
During a spurt of severe heat in July, Japan deployed a word its meteorological agency adopted in April that translates to “cruel heat day” for when temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
But planet-warming pollution is roughly 25 percent higher than it was two decades ago. While governments have scrambled to respond to this summer’s extremes, many are not meaningfully reducing emissions or developing long-term resilience that would help countries adapt to a hotter world.
At a time when many countries face rising energy demands and supply chain constraints, they are managing extreme heat by focusing on energy supplies and transportation. This summer’s heat waves in the U.S. have combined with surging electricity demand from data centers to put added stress on the electrical grid. The Trump administration has responded to increasing demand by extending the life of aging coal plants and supporting fossil-fueled power.
World leaders can expect more extreme conditions in the months ahead. This year’s El Niño is set to reach a new peak around November or December, which forecasts suggest will far exceed past events. That will amplify heat and drought more than it already has, and scientists expect 2027 to shatter 2024’s record as the hottest year ever observed.
It could also severely heighten next summer’s risk for fires in the Amazon, an ecosystem already hit so hard by warming and deforestation that parts of it could become savanna within three decades.
Already some countries are facing steep costs from dealing with the impacts of extreme weather. As climate change accelerates, the costs will, too.
“Every day, we have a heat wave somewhere in the world. And those heat waves are more intense, more frequent and last longer due to climate change,” said Samantha Burgess, climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “Hopefully, governments do learn from this.”
