A fatal heat of up to 44C is a burn in southern Europe, because scientists warn against a “Molotov cocktail” of climatic conditions which feed large forest fires through the Mediterranean.
In Italy, where 40C temperatures are expected in Florence later this week, a four -year -old boy died of a heat stroke and a red warning warning was issued for seven major cities, including Bologna and Florence.
The boy had been found unconscious in the family’s car in Sardinia and was transported by plane to a hospital in Rome several days ago, but died on Monday from irreversible brain lesions.
The French weather has placed more than half of the country in warnings of heat waves on Monday morning, with 12 administrative units out of 96 on the continent under the highest red alert, while Spain Aemet warned an “extreme danger” in Zaragoza and in the Basque Country when it emitted yellow and orange warnings for almost all the rest of the country.
The two meteorological agencies provide temperatures above 40 ° C in the coming days and have called for vigilance in the middle of the forecasts of a heat wave “very intense, even exceptional” in certain parts of the continent.
High temperatures have alarmed the experts while firefighters find it difficult to contain destructive drilling fires. In France, which brought his biggest fire since 1949 under control Sunday, the authorities reported that a person died in the fire, while 20 firefighters and five civilians had been injured.
In the Balkans, Croatian officials praised the “superhuman” efforts of the firefighters while they turn off a big fire near the division on Monday, while Serbian meteorologists warned against the “extreme conditions” so that the fires develop in the middle of temperatures up to 40c. Forest fires in Albania and Montenegro also forced people to flee their homes, according to local media.
In Spain, fires that broke out in León and Zamora forced more than 1,000 people on Sunday to flee their homes, while large fires continued to burn in Galicia.
Cristina Santín Nuño, fire scientists at the National Spanish Research Council, said that the large number of flames was “expected” after a wet source that helped grow plants was followed by extreme heat, strong winds and long periods without rain.
“If we add to that the relatively easy possibility that a spark can light a fire somewhere … We have all the ingredients of” Molotov cocktail “that we see at the moment,” she said.
French forecasters said heat records should be broken on Monday and Tuesday when temperatures were 42C in the southwest. The temperatures reached a record of 41.4c in the village of Tourbes, near Béziers, this weekend.
In Spain, temperatures should increase more in the Boute basin, third parties in the south and east of the Iberian Peninsula and the Eastern Cantabrian Sea. They had to fall into the northwest, especially in Galicia.
The meteorological agency said it expected a heat of 37 to 39 ° C inside the Iberian peninsula on Monday, with maximum temperatures greater than 40 ° C inside the Basque Country and peaks that could reach 44 ° C in the lower Guadalquivir.
Jesús Santiago Notario del Pino, a soil scientist from the University of Laguna, said that the conditions of “extreme and prolonged warmth” had started the large number of fires across the country by driving fuel.
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He added: “The areas of the center and the northwest, theoretically less prone to serious fires – compared to the Mediterranean coast, for example – are burning. It strikes me. “
The world has warned about 1.4 ° C due to the pollution of fossil fuels, which forms a blanket trapping heat around the earth, and the destruction of nature, which sucks carbon dioxide of air.
In Europe, which has warmed almost twice as quickly as the world average, a hot and dry air mass suspended on a large part of the Iberian and France peninsula coincided with high summer sun levels that have pushed even higher temperatures.
In addition to the risk for humans of flames and smoke, forest fires in Spain also threatened the World Heritage site from Las Médulas to El Bierzo.
“Personally, today is a sad day for me,” said Santín Nuño, who is from El Bierzo. “Las Médulas has burned there, a beautiful place with chestnut trees of several centuries and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”
She added: “In Spain, we are faced with a new reality of forest fires because our landscapes have changed a lot in recent decades – there is more vegetation likely to burn – and now, climate change creates more opportunities for these landscapes to burn more widely, intensely and dangerously.”
