 "Spain, Europe, Heatwave")
Authorities in Sardinia and Sicily in Italy closed tourist attractions as temperatures rose to 40 degrees. Madrid in Spain and Rome in Italy also followed suit, even as temperatures were slightly lower in these two cities.
Temperatures reached record highs across the Mediterranean region. And the continent is bracing for more intense and longer-lasting heat waves.
Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European weather forecasting agency, said that the continent expects heatwaves such as the ones that affected Europe last summer or the one currently ongoing, to become more intense and to last longer because of climate change, according to a report in The Financial Times (FT).
He added that it was unclear whether a previous record temperature of 48.8 degrees set in Sicily two years ago had been broken this week.
Buontempo said that temperatures would ease slightly towards the end of this week but will remain "much warmer than normal" in many parts of southern Europe.
The high heat in the continent is a result of an anti-cyclonic high-pressure system named "Cerberus" by the Italian Meteorological Society.
More From This Section
According to Copernicus, temperatures in June were 0.5 degrees above the global average.
The weather has drastically affected tourism and agriculture.
Multiple wildfires outside Athens, which started on Monday, were still burning on Tuesday, destroying homes and cars and forcing thousands of residents to evacuate the area.
Last week, the Acropolis in Athens, which receives more than 15,000 visitors daily, had to be shut down during the peak heat hours.
Lina Mendoni, Greek culture minister, said that she had been receiving hourly updates about the heat to decide whether to keep sites open, according to the FT report.
"We all need to adapt ourselves to the climate crisis we are facing," she said.
On Tuesday, health officials in Italy declared heat emergencies in 20 cities. The officials have asked hospitals to brace for a potential surge of people suffering from heat-related problems.
In Rome, the city's protection organisation and volunteers set up 28 help points across the city to provide water and medical assistance to those overcome by the heat.
A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health reported that over 61,000 people have died from heat-related conditions in Europe between the end of May and the beginning of September last year, with Italy the worst hit by the heat.
Spain and Germany were also among those with the highest numbers of mortalities from heat-related issues.
Luca Bergamaschi, the founder of Ecco, an independent climate think-tank, said the extreme heat should be a wake-up call to Italy's right-wing government.
Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni said that members of her right-wing government are not "dangerous climate change deniers", and her government will undertake gradual measures to combat climate change so as not to affect Italy's economy and traditions.
Robert Rohde, the lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a US non-profit climate research organisation, said that record temperatures result from climate change caused by burning fossil fuels and other human activities, combined with the emerging El Nino.
