A French firefighter responds to a flare-up to prevent the fire from reigniting in the Fontainebleau Forest, in Noisy-sur-Ecole, France. Photograph: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty Images
Figures come as large parts of southern Europe endure another record-breaking period of extreme temperatures
France recorded more than 5,700 excess deaths during its June heatwave, authorities have said, as swathes of southern Europe continue to endure another record-breaking period of extreme temperatures.
The French national health agency said on Wednesday that it had recorded 5,764 excess deaths between 17 June and 2 July, an excess mortality rate of 36%.
More than half of the “unprecedented” total were recorded between 25 and 27 June, with deaths of people aged 75 and older accounting for about two-thirds of the excess mortality, the agency said.
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The announcement came as firefighters in Spain battled one of the country’s largest ever wildfires, which has burned about 32,000 hectares (79,000 acres) in the Guadalajara region north of Madrid, forcing the evacuation of 1,200 people from 34 villages in the sparsely populated area and confinement orders in 14 others.
Authorities said on Wednesday that the fire was beginning to stabilise, and residents of five villages were allowed to return home. The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said on a visit to the area that Spain had already suffered 22 major wildfires so far this year, four times more than in the same period last year.
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Barren, salt-damaged soil in a sunflower field in Scardovari, north-east Italy. Low water levels and prolonged hot, dry conditions in the Po delta are threatening irrigation supplies and crops. Photograph: Piero Cruciatti/Anadolu/Getty Images
Analysis shows how heatwaves are making atmosphere thirstier, damaging water supplies, food production and power generation
Extreme heat supercharged by the climate crisis is sucking Europe dry in summer and intensifying the drought hitting the continent, a scientific analysis has found.
Record-breaking heatwaves meant the hot atmosphere strongly evaporated water from rivers, lakes, soils and plants – conditions made 80 times more likely by global heating in western Europe and 40 times more likely in eastern Europe, the study showed. The level of soil dryness in the west was made five times more likely by the pollution from fossil fuels in the west, and 11 times more likely in the east.
Droughts have usually been linked to low rainfall, but western Europe’s most recent winter was a wet one. The scientists said the climate crisis was redefining drought in Europe, with high temperatures the key factor this summer. Today’s drought in western Europe is classified as “extreme” but would have been “moderate” in the world before the climate crisis, according to the analysis.
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Deadly wildfires have raged through Spain and France and farmers have been hit hard, facing some of the driest soils on record. About 9m tonnes of grain are expected to be lost across Europe, with the worst maize harvest in 50 years expected in France, and Romanian farmers losing over a million hectares of crops.
Rivers are running low across Europe, cutting the generation of clean hydropower and restricting cargo ships. The Rhine at Lobith in the Netherlands is now lower than the minimum level seen in the hot summer of 1976. The scientists warned that this disruption could push up the price of food and energy, hitting low-income households hardest.
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A woman uses an umbrella to try to cope with the scorching heat in London on 8 July. Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images
For months, ministers have refused to publish a report on how climate crisis will affect the UK. Burnham must release it
The past two months have seen exceptionally hot weather across much of Western Europe, with even the UK witnessing record temperatures. Even now, England and Wales are well into their third heatwave this year, with some areas on their 13th consecutive day of temperatures above 30°C.
More than 2,700 people are thought to have died as a result of the extreme heat in England and Wales, with scientists estimating that 440 people died during each of the three peak days of June’s record-breaking heatwave, when temperatures reached 37.7°C.
The situation was perhaps best summarised by the Met Office’s State of the UK Climate report for 2025, published last week: “What we used to think of as extreme, we increasingly see as normal.”
Introducing the report, its lead author, climate information scientist Mike Kendon, notes that “2025 was the UK’s warmest year on record, the sixth time this record has been broken in the 21st century so far”. He adds: “The latest 10-year period (2016-2025) is 1.33°C warmer than the period from 1961-1990”.
In these elevated temperatures, wildfires are a particular concern. This week, local authorities across France cancelled many Bastille Day events to minimise fire risks, not least from firework displays, and in the UK there were fears about what are becoming known as “firewaves”. Less cold winters mean more vegetation earlier in the spring, which, when dried out by heatwaves like those seen this year, increases the risk of wildfires. Last Tuesday, emergency services dealt with 19 such fires, including two major incidents, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council.
Speaking to the Guardian, Maria Barbosa of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said: “What we are witnessing is climate change actively rewriting the vulnerability of the British landscape.” Perhaps the key element to draw out here is that this is not a change likely to affect us in the future; it is happening now.
Moreover, it relates to one of the surprising elements of the June heat: a public disconnect in the UK between acceptance of climate breakdown and relating this to carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil or gas. People seemed unwilling or unable to make this link, even with the widespread personal experience of heat, the risk of wildfires and those reports of thousands of deaths.
One explanation is that many of our biggest media outlets often fail to point to the connection.
Researchers at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit reviewed 2,500 news reports on the heatwaves from the nine main national daily newspapers, finding that nearly three-quarters made no mention of climate breakdown. The Financial Times was most likely to mention the climate crisis, doing so in 50 of its 78 articles on the heatwaves, while The Sun was least likely to do so – making the link in only four of its 69 articles.
All too often, the reports gave the impression that the main challenge regarding the heatwaves will be adapting to the “new normal” of a hotter world, with plenty of coverage on changing our behaviour, converting buildings and being prepared for new health concerns.
But the challenge we face goes way beyond that. Adapting to a world where average temperatures are 2.5°C above current levels might be possible at considerable cost and human suffering, but unless we also cut carbon dioxide emissions, then we will have to keep on adapting to ever-higher temperatures. Concentrating on current adaptation alone is barely half the answer.
This is a known issue within government and is causing such concern that publicity is unwelcome, as shown by events relating to a study prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee, which was officially described as a “national security assessment” and titled somewhat ominously: Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security.
The study was supposed to be launched at a landmark event on 9 October last year, but was held back, with one source telling The Guardian that insiders “feared it was being suppressed because the government was unwilling to face the issues raised.”
After pressure from MPs, including the official environmental audit committee, and Freedom of Information requests to publish the report, the government eventually released a redacted 14-page version in January this year. It warns of a high probability that the UK’s national security, financial prosperity and food security will come under threat from the climate crisis and the subsequent collapse of vital ecosystems that support food production.
Even that makes for very sober reading. The report identifies nine “planetary boundaries” as the safe limits identified for human pressure on nine Earth system processes crucial to maintaining a stable planet, such as climate change, biosphere integrity and oceanic acidification. Six have already been crossed.
The report concludes that ecosystem degradation is occurring across all global regions and every critical ecosystem is on a “pathway to collapse”, which it helpfully defines as “irreversible loss of function beyond repair”.
The implications are huge. This is an official government study by the combined intelligence agencies, and even if redacted, it is unable to hide the crisis ahead. One conclusion is obvious: if this is the greatest threat to our security and the integrity of the global ecosystem, we should be redirecting money away from conventional military spending and towards human and environmental security.
A key requirement of Andy Burnham as incoming prime minister should be the immediate release of the full report, followed by a vigorous public debate on where we go from here.
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Arctic sea ice appeared to be entering a new phase. In the early 2020s, the rapid decline seen over previous decades seemed to ease, leading scientists to ask whether winter sea ice loss had slowed.
Our new study suggests that conclusion was premature. After two exceptionally low-ice winters in 2025 and 2026, the recent slowdown disappears. The almost 6% drop between 2024 and 2025 was the largest single-year decline on record. The latest observations restore a statistically significant downward trend, showing how a few unusual years can quickly change the overall picture.
Sea ice is a crucial indicator of climate change in the Arctic. As the planet warms, the Arctic is warming even faster, and satellite observations have shown that sea ice has declined in every month of the year since the late 1970s. The loss is largest at the end of summer, when the Arctic reaches its annual minimum ice cover, but winter sea ice has also been shrinking.
Arctic Sea Ice near Greenland. Isabelle White, University of Southampton
However, this decline has not been smooth. In the early 2020s, Arctic sea ice loss appeared to slow across much of the year. This did not mean the ice had recovered to what it was before modern global warming. But compared with the rapid losses seen in earlier decades, the trends seemed weaker, raising an important question: had Arctic sea ice decline begun to slow?
Exceptional winters
Our study examines why these two winters changed things. Until 2024, the recent 20-year decline in winter sea ice extent was not statistically significant – meaning the data is consistent with no decline over the past 20 years.
The record low of ice in 2025, followed by another near-record low in 2026, should rewrite the overall narrative. Using the February–March average, which we use to represent winter sea ice extent, 2025 recorded the largest single-year decline in the satellite record.
Including these latest observations changes the picture of a weakened decline. Once the 2025 and 2026 winters are included, the 20-year trend in Arctic winter sea ice extent returns to a statistically significant decline. We can now be much more confident that the trend is real, and the decline is still ongoing.
How Arctic winter sea ice extent has changed since 1980:
A fall of nearly 6% in one year also raises an obvious question: can Arctic winter sea ice really drop this quickly under current climate conditions? To answer this question, we examined climate model simulations of Arctic climates warmed by a similar amount to today, and asked whether they ever produce a one-year winter sea ice drop as large as the one seen in 2025.
They do, although only rarely.
In simulations where the Arctic has warmed by a similar amount to today, about 3°C since 1980, a one-year winter sea ice drop of this size occurs in roughly one out of every 100 simulated years. This suggests that the 2025 drop was unusual, but still physically plausible. It does not require a new explanation. Instead, it is consistent with a warming Arctic in which year-to-year variability can produce abrupt changes. From one winter to the next, the extent of sea ice can decline sharply, remain stable, or even increase.
So what should we expect in the coming years?
If warming continues, the same model simulations suggest that winter sea ice is unlikely to rebound to the higher levels seen in the early 2020s. This does not mean every coming winter will set a new record low. Arctic sea ice will continue to fluctuate from year to year. But under continued warming, these recent low-ice winters may mark a shift towards winter ice fluctuating around a lower average level.
The lesson, at least for winter, is that Arctic sea ice loss has not stopped. The apparent slowdown of the early 2020s looked real at the time, but now looks more like a pause than a lasting change. Short-term variability can temporarily mask decline, but it does not remove the underlying pressure from Arctic warming.
The open question is whether the same pattern will emerge in summer, which has also shown a recent slowdown in sea ice retreat. So far, the renewed winter decline has not yet translated into an equally clear renewed decline in summer.
Winter and summer sea ice are connected. Low winter ice may help precondition the ice cover for stronger spring and summer melt. But the connection is not automatic: Arctic sea ice does not simply move in the same direction, in every season, at the same time. Spring weather, clouds, snow cover, winds, ocean heat and ice thickness all affect how much ice survives to the summer minimum.
Understanding how these factors evolve in a changing climate will be crucial for answering whether, and when, summer sea ice decline re-emerges from its recent slowdown.
