Temperatures in Europe hit a new high this summer, with hotter early-summer heatwaves triggering illness, deaths and the collapse of infrastructure across the continent.Transport buckled on Sunday as temperatures hit 40C (104F) across Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. In France, days averaging 29.8C (85.6F) – spiking to 44C (111.2F) in one town – gave way to storms, leaving an estimated 1,000 excess deaths behind.Scenes like this may well be the new normal.Last summer’s heatwave alone caused an estimated 2,300 climate-related deaths in 12 European countries, WWA says.A study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) has found that intense heat on this level is now tens to hundreds of times more likely than it was in 2003, and was unheard of 50 years ago.“Heat-related mortality is likely to remain a feature of Europe’s warming climate,” warns Dr Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s regional director for Europe. Deaths have already risen by an average of 52 per million people annually since the 1990s, he told Al Jazeera – a trend he says shows little sign of reversing on its own.So what does this mean for the future? Are these temperatures the new normal, and if so, why?We asked the climate experts:Is this really the new normal?Yes, it certainly looks that way. According to WWA, heatwaves were generally about 3.5C cooler in June 1976, and 2C cooler even in 2003.“Think of it like a race where …
