Spell of sweltering weather expected to last several days as temperatures hit 40C and UN urges countries to develop better warning systems

European countries including France, Spain, Italy and Britain have issued weather alerts and the United Nations has urged countries to create better warning systems as a heatwave sweeping western Europe was expected to push temperatures to a nine-year high on Wednesday.

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The heatwave, enveloping Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and northern Italy, is expected to last several days and has already seen temperatures rise as high as 40C.

In the west of France, in Brittany and the Pays de la Loire, there was a massive power cut which saw between 600,000 and a million homes left without electricity between Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday morning after high temperatures affected power equipment. State authorities said it was “exceptional” for the weather to have such repercussions on power supply to homes. The heatwave sparked a further power cut in the western town of Vannes early on Wednesday morning, leaving up to 120,000 homes without electricity at 7am.

In France, where temperatures in some areas have reached 40C, train transport continued to be disrupted and delayed on several lines, including between Paris and Toulouse, as metal tracks and cabling were affected. Within Paris, the RER C trains which link the capital to the suburbs were experiencing delays as trains were slowed and maintenance work was carried out to avoid tracks buckling in the heat.

France’s weather office put 40 regions on orange alert, warning of an “enduring heatwave of significant intensity requiring particular vigilance”.

France, which has activated its national heatwave emergency plan, is particularly sensitive to the risks after thousands of its elderly people in isolated areas died in a European-wide heatwave in 2003 that led to nearly 20,000 deaths. In 2003, Europe was caught off-guard by the severity of the heatwave, and authorities are currently working to ensure the most vulnerable – such as elderly people, young children and those who are ill – are monitored.

Temperatures in Paris are expected to hit 39C on Wednesday afternoon, after south-west France saw temperatures of 42C and Córdoba in southern Spain recorded nearly 44C.

In Paris, which has seen a spike in air pollution during the heatwave, the city hall took measures to limit drivers’ journeys, making residential parking free, imposing speed limits and encouraging use of public transport.

From Italy to the Netherlands, governments warned of the risks to older people, young children and those with serious illnesses.

The UN has urged countries to create alert systems to counter the health risks of heatwaves as they become more frequent, intense and dangerous due to climate change.



For the first time, the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) and its World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have joined forces to create guidelines for experts and authorities for how to lower the health risks of heatwaves such as the ones currently scorching Asia and Europe.

“Heatwaves have emerged as an important hydrometeorological hazard and will remain so, given projected changes in the frequency of extreme heat events associated with human-induced climate change,” the UN text warned.

The main recommendation was to create heatwave warning systems that highlight the health hazards and inform people what they should do to protect themselves.

While such systems exist in countries such as France, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the WHO voiced concern about places such as Pakistan, where more than 1,200 people have died amid soaring temperatures in the south of the country.

That crisis came a month after neighbouring India suffered a deadly heatwave that killed more than 2,000 people.

“It is common to have weather forecasts tell people what the temperature is going to be, but in many countries they have not looked at what that means to health,” he told the news agency Agence France-Presse.

WHO and WMO are calling on countries, even those not traditionally hit by extreme temperatures, to put in place heatwave preparedness systems, allowing them to quickly alert the population to dangers and put hospitals on standby for an influx of patients suffering from heat-related ailments.

“Climate change is not only likely to bring about changes in the frequency and duration of heatwaves in ‘core’ heatwave regions but also an alteration of the geographical distribution of heatwave disasters,” WMO and WHO warned in their guidelines, based on several previous scientific studies.

This meant heatwaves might occur in places where they had not happened previously, they said.

They also warned that urbanisation had exacerbated the problem, since cities tend to be hotter than elsewhere, putting vulnerable populations such as the elderly and chronically ill more at risk.