Europe heatwave live: red warning issued for millions in England; France and Belgium cancel events

The community living next to the largest datacentre park in Europe say the scorching summer heat has grown unbearable.

On days like Wednesday, said Nabeel Nawaz, the store manager of a Chaiiwala franchise in the centre of Slough, England, the heat is like something “pinching your body and burning your skin”.

What is harder to establish is whether this heat is just the result of the climate emergency, and the growing industrial sprawl across London, or whether the dozens of energy-hungry datacentres that have sprung up are also contributing to the problem.

Ten miles (16km) west of Heathrow, Slough has become one of the largest datacentre hubs in the world, hosting an estimated 30 to 40 huge facilities, many of them on a campus in the centre of town. These – owned and maintained by companies like Equinix and Digital Realty – serve dozens of clients, including the world’s biggest tech companies: Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft.

More are still to be built in a planned development on the edge of the same campus.

Emerging research – including a preprint of a paper led by researchers at Cambridge earlier this year – suggests datacentres create a heat island effect, pushing up temperatures in their immediate vicinity by an average of 2C, and as much as 9C.

Read Aisha’s full piece here:

Health chiefs in the UK are warning of the impact the heatwave is having on services as they face significantly more life-threatening emergency calls with record-breaking temperatures continuing to scorch the country.

Several hospitals have declared critical incidents, with University Hospital Southampton being forced to cancel a number of planned operations and some outpatient appointments.

The London Ambulance Service (LAS) responded to its highest number of life-threatening emergencies ever on Wednesday, and its chief operating officer Craig Harman said he expects “demand to grow day on day over the next couple of days”.

As football fans prepare to cheer on England in Saturday’s World Cup game, Harman has told people to drink alcohol responsibly, drinking “plenty of water” in between alcoholic beverages.

He told the Press Association it is not just the elderly and people with underlying health conditions affected by the heat, adding: “I’m saying to people I need you to drink water even when you’re not thirsty, staying out of the sun during the hottest parts of the day, and particularly not exercising outside and putting your body under additional heat and strain.”

In the UK leading security, military and academic experts are set to join a newly launched government taskforce aimed at addressing growing threats to the country posed by climate change, PA reports.

The group will advise the government on how to better anticipate and respond to these risks, as global warming and nature loss are increasingly recognised as core drivers of geopolitical instability and economic disruption.

Co-chaired by climate minister Katie White and security minister Dame Angela Eagle, officials said the taskforce will meet to pinpoint gaps in the UK’s preparedness.

The experts will also aim to identify the most serious climate and nature threats to national security, review existing resilience work across government and set out clear recommendations to strengthen readiness, they said.

Meanwhile in Belgium, the authorities have cancelled this weekend’s reenactment of Napoleon’s defeat at the battle of Waterloo as the country swelters under a heatwave, AFP reported.

The annual event sees hundreds of enthusiasts dressed up in Napoleonic-era costumes recreate the battle from 1815 before history-loving crowds.

“Waterloo 2026 reenactments cancelled: safety first,” the organisers announced.

“The safety of the public, participants, volunteers, emergency service workers cannot be comprised.”

Temperatures in Belgium are nearing record highs for June, as part of a broader heatwave choking swathes of Europe.

Near Italy’s Po River estuary, clam fishers toiled picking their nets free of algae spawned by the heat, AFP reported.

“On top of all our problems, now there’s this crazy heat, so long, so unexpected,” said Paolo Mancin, head of a fishers’ cooperative, standing in the 31C water.

“Algae form and the clams are dying in large numbers.”

Over in Italy, Genoa has become the 18th Italian city covered the red extreme health alert, ANSA news agency reported.

It joins 17 cities that already were on red alert, including some of major tourist attractions of Bologna, Florence, Rome, Turin and Verona.

Palermo’s courthouse suspended hearings until 29 June, while Florence’s Uffizi Gallery said it has extended a suspension of ticket sales imposed earlier this week, with only people with previous bookings allowed to enter, ANSA said.

“Due to the exceptional heatwave currently affecting the country (and Florence in particular) access to the Uffizi Gallery will be restricted to those with a pre-booked ticket only until and including Sunday 28 June. We apologise for any inconvenience caused,” Uffizi said in a statement.

James Michelin for MetDesk

Temperatures are forecast to rise dramatically in parts of central and northern Europe this weekend as the intense heatwave continues.

In Germany and Poland, highs up to or exceeding 40C are expected on both Saturday and Sunday, days after swathes of France experienced similar extreme temperatures.

The Austrian Grand Prix, taking place this weekend in Spielberg, has declared a heat hazard, the first race to do so this season. Temperatures are expected to rise into the low 30s celsius during the race, almost 10C warmer than usual for the venue.

Over in the UK, firefighters are still trying to bring a large wildfire in Derbyshire under control.

The blaze, which has burned over 500 square metres of moorland and woodland on Tintwistle Moor, near Glossop, broke out on Wednesday evening, with fire crews from Manchester and Derbyshire deploying a water-dropping helicopter and six fire engines on Thursday.

Thick clouds of smoke are affecting local villages and forcing road closures, with residents warned to keep windows and doors shut, while ash and smoke are impacting air quality in parts of Bolton and Greater Manchester.

Derbyshire fire and rescue service called for heightened awareness of fire risk amid the heatwave.

“The ground is tinder dry and the slightest spark from a campfire, a tiny burning ember from a barbecue, or a flake of ash from a discarded cigarette could soon escalate to a major incident so please act responsibly,” the service said.

Organisers postponed the French capital’s weekend Pride March after police ordered them to change the date to avoid overwhelming response services already under pressure due to extreme heat, AFP reported.

“The march has been postponed,” said Anouk Veyret, co-president of the Inter-LGBT association.

“We’re thinking of holding it in September, but the whole team needs to meet to see how we can bounce back.”

The Pride March in the French city of Lyon, likewise to be celebrated on Saturday, was also cancelled on Friday.

At least 150 million Europeans will experience temperatures above 35C today, much higher than in the previous two days (94 million on Wednesday and 101 million yesterday), according to AFP estimates.

More than 420 million people across Europe, excluding Turkey, will see temperatures above 30C.

That’s around 70% of the population.

The Paris police prefect has asked the organisers of the Pride march and the Solidays music festival to cancel their events due to the continuing extreme heat.

The unusual move is needed to prevent a further health crisis, the police said, as the healthcare system is already facing unprecedented pressures due to the weather.

Its statement said:

“While the weather forecast shows no improvement, some large-scale cultural or protest events, such as the Solidays festival, the Pride March, and the athletics meeting at the Charléty stadium, are still scheduled for this weekend

Despite the adjustments made by the organisers and their efforts to increase their internal first aid capacity, the influx of several hundred thousand people to these events will create a high risk of overburdening a healthcare system already stretched to its limits.

Therefore, considering these factors and in order to concentrate the remaining resources on assisting the most vulnerable, the Prefect of Police has asked the organisers to cancel their events.

Should they refuse, the Prefect of Police will prohibit them by decree.”

Business reporter

The latest heatwave to grip the UK and much of western Europe has presented significant challenges to employers and their employees, from sweltering offices, disrupted commutes and school closures to dangerous construction sites where workers are at risk of dehydration, heatstroke and other injury.

There is now a growing acceptance that increasing spells of extreme heat have a significant impact on productivity and threaten Europe’s already sluggish economies. Economists warn that the climate crisis will dent economic growth unless European countries adapt their ageing buildings and infrastructure.

Robert Marks, the lead climate economist at Oxford Economics, said temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s would “likely lead to substantial productivity losses and directly disrupt labour across construction, agriculture, manufacturing, retail and hospitality and other sectors which are unable to provide a protected work environment”.

“These sectors represent 27% of economic activity in the UK and an average of 35% in western Europe,” he said. As a result, a four-day heatwave “could reduce quarterly labour productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points in the UK and up to two percentage points in the rest of western Europe”.

The largest loss of working hours in western, northern and southern Europe by 2030 is expected to be felt by the agriculture and construction sectors, according to research by the International Labour Office.

Researchers at the insurance group Allianz found extreme heat was emerging as a “structural economic risk” for Europe. They found France, Spain and Italy were among the European economies most exposed to the growing economic cost of heat stress (the UK was not included in the study). This was because productivity losses intensify sharply above a 30C threshold, while at the same time the cost of energy required to cool machinery and buildings rises.

Electronic music festival Defqon.1 in the Netherlands has been cancelled for the rest of the weekend due to the red extreme heat alert issued in the country.

The organisers said in a statement:

“This is the first time the Netherlands has ever issued a code red warning because of high temperatures. Together with the authorities, we are therefore forced to cancel the remaining days of Defqon.1.”

Over in France, the number of people who drowned during this heatwave has gone up to 55, sports minister Marina Ferrari told Franceinfo.

She worried that the situation could get worse as the heatwave continues.

In comments reported by Le Figaro, she said that two-thirds of the drownings took place at unsupervised or unauthorised swimming areas.

61 French departments remain under the highest red extreme heat alert today.

As the heatwave begins its march eastwards, we are expecting to see more extreme temperatures in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and parts of central Europe today.

Frankfurt is expected to see 39C today, Amsterdam and Bologna 37C, Brussels and Geneva 36C, Prague and Zurich 35C, and London and Zagreb 34C.

In central Europe, the temperatures will peak over the weekend, with authorities expecting temperatures near 40C in Berlin on Saturday, and in Prague and Warsaw on Sunday.

Scientists said in a study released Friday that human-made climate change was “unequivocally” responsible for the heat that broke records in Britain, France, Spain and Switzerland, while the Netherlands issued its first-ever red alert over heat, AFP reported.

It would have been “virtually impossible” for such exceptional temperatures to occur in June fifty years ago, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists said.

A similar heatwave would have been 3.5C cooler during the day in June 1976, concluded the study by scientists from Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom.

But the world is hotter today and “the chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely”, said the study’s lead author Theodore Keeping from Imperial College London.

The UK Met Office has extended a red heat alert into Friday for a large area of south-east England, the first time such warnings have been issued for three days in a row.

The red warning is in place until 9pm for London, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Hampshire and Kent. Amber heat warnings are in place for a wider area on Friday, and are running into Saturday for parts of east and south-east England.

On Friday, swathes of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland face yellow warnings for thunderstorms.

A weather warning for thunderstorms and heavy rain is in place across Scotland for the entirety of Friday, following days of baking temperatures. Temperatures reached 31.2C at Threave in Dumfries and Galloway on Thursday, according to Met Office data.

However, the weather is set to change dramatically as rainier conditions sweep in from the north-west. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued flood alerts for every area of Scotland other than Shetland.

In Europe, France is braced for more stifling heat. From noon, Paris will begin a ban on drinking alcohol in public for certain times of the day. You can read more about that here. The ban also covers takeaway alcohol sales in Paris. Police said the ban was necessary as hospitals were overwhelmed and had reached ‘“saturation point”. At least 48 people have died in France from drowning since the start of the heatwave.

Germany, Austria, Italy and Czechia face a torrid few days as temperatures are forecast to soar further east and south.

The London ambulance service (LAS) said it had responded to its highest number of life-threatening emergencies ever on Wednesday. Chief operating officer Craig Harman said they expect “demand to grow day on day over the next couple of days”.

Harman urged people to drink responsibly, as football fans prepare to cheer for England during Saturday’s World Cup game against Panama. He advised people to drink “plenty of water” in between alcoholic beverages.

LAS saw a 50% increase in life-threatening emergency calls compared with a typical Wednesday in June, with the number of cardiac arrests up 30%.

In Paris, cardiac arrest callouts in were up fourfold, officials said on Thursday.

Italian news reports said five people died on Wednesday from heat-related incidents.