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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, now to our climate story of the week. We're looking to Europe this time, where an unprecedented heat wave is rolling across the continent. Today, 40 million Americans are under heat wave warnings, but within the last week, regions of Portugal, Spain, Wales, Ireland, and England have set record high temperatures. I mentioned it's 100 degrees in London right now. I think that's their hottest temperature ever. Well, our guest will tell us. This heat wave in Europe has led to a reported 1,000 deaths in Spain and Portugal and has ignited wildfires that are still raging across Southwestern France, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

The New York Times report said even a French zoo has been forced to evacuate its animals due to the very unusual threats there of smoke and fire. Across the English Channel, officials in the UK have declared a state of emergency. Train lines in London were forced to reduce speeds or altogether cancel services due to concerns that the rails could buckle in the heat. London's airport was forced to cancel flights after a stretch of tarmac may have melted. They obviously don't build for this heat over there like we do over here. Despite the blistering few days, Britain's Meteorological Society warned that temperatures were expected to continue climbing before this heat wave is over and hit nearly 42 degrees Celsius today in some places.

That would be 108 degrees, more or less, Fahrenheit. 108 degrees. Joining me now to discuss this historic heat in Europe and what climate change might have to do with it is Andrew Freedman, an energy and climate reporter for Axios. Andrew, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. I think we'll have Andrew Freedman in just a minute. Meanwhile, listeners, we'll open up the phones. You'll be part of this, too. Anybody listening in Europe right now and want to give us a first-hand report? Have you recently traveled through any of the affected areas? If you did, was your vacation to England unexpectedly hit by this heat? Did your flight get canceled due to melting tarmac? Yikes.

Perhaps you used to live in one of these regions, Portugal or France, now being ravaged by fires. Give us a call and let us know your reports from on the ground. (212)-433-WNYC, (212)-433-9692. As we get Andrew Freedman from Axios back on the line, we're going to start by taking a call that has come in from Switzerland. Mari in Switzerland, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mari, thanks for calling in.

Mari: Hello, thank you so much for taking my call. I think this is such an important topic. I was just hiking in the Alps today. It was the same hike I did a month ago. A month ago, there were four streams I had to cross, and today they all had dried up. As I told your screener on Friday, I was hiking above the Aletsch glacier, which is the largest glacier in the Alps, and it is shrinking at the rate of 50 meters per year. There is a distinct mark you can see. Its high level, the previous century, was 200 meters higher than it is now. Throughout Europe, we are just seeing that climate change is devastating everything. I keep thinking of the Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi, "Don't know what you've got until it's gone." You know?

Brian Lehrer: I know. Mari, thank you for checking--

Mauri: The other thing-

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Mauri: -I wanted to add, too, is that Americans might not realize, nobody in Europe has air conditioning because it did not used to be this hot here in the summer. For example, for us here in Switzerland where I live, it's 95 degrees Fahrenheit without air conditioning. There are no stores with air conditioning, there's no place. I go down into my parking garage to try to cool off. It really is dire.

Brian Lehrer: How unusual is it for it to be 95 degrees where you are in Switzerland?

Mauri: Well, in the last 10 years, not unusual. In fact, I lived in Prague when there was the other heat wave that killed so many people, but up until the last 10-20 years, it just was unheard of.

Brian Lehrer: Mari, thank you so much for checking in with us. We really appreciate it. Now we do have Andrew Freedman, climate and energy reporter for Axios. Andrew, sorry about whatever that technical difficulty was. Welcome to WNYC.

Andrew Freedman: Thanks for having me. It was a glitch on my end. I don't know what's up with that.

Brian Lehrer: Can you walk us through the timeline of this heat wave? Where did it start, and how has it been impacting UK and the mainland of the European continent, big picture?

Andrew Freedman: If you look at where this started, this really started over Western and Northwestern Africa as a hot air mass gathered intensity, if you will, for many weeks. Then what happened was, the weather pattern over Europe got sluggish, a little bit stuck in place by the jet streams. That, in itself, is suspicious to climate scientists because we are seeing more stuck weather patterns around the world, especially in the summer. That's thought to be related to climate change. Between a high-pressure area over Central Europe, also known as a heat dome, and a low-pressure area west of Spain and Portugal, you just had this funnel effect that carried that hot air mass which has a Saharan-type influence. This is ultra ultra hot air, funneled it northward.

First to be hit were Spain and Portugal. Portugal, we had temperatures up over 116 degrees Fahrenheit. They were setting all-time temperature records. Spain was setting all-time temperature records. We had the fires, which are still burning. That moved into France, and they've been dealing with it for at least a week, especially in the Southwestern part of the country, with the wildfires. Mercifully, the country that is least prepared for this, which is the UK, has not had to deal with it for as long as these other countries have, but the heat has been intense to the point where climate scientists that I've been talking to in the past couple of days have said they are walking around in a state of shock.

When they saw the computer models projecting 40 degrees C in UK they didn't quite believe it because that's never happened before. That's been projected before but never happened. Now what we're seeing is the combination of natural variability, human-caused climate change, and other factors such as these stuck patterns where you get feedbacks between drought and heat, same thing that we get out west in the United States that is happening in Europe, that accelerates the heat, that makes it even hotter.

Brian Lehrer: I'm looking at the CNBC website right now which says Britain, in fact, recorded its hottest day ever today with temperatures hitting a high of 40.2 degrees Celsius, which is 104.4 degrees Fahrenheit in South England, according the provisional data from the Met Office there. It says, "Millions of Brits endured the country's hottest ever night last night with temperatures remaining above 25 degrees Celsius in places." To bring this from weather to climate, I guess it goes back to what our caller from Switzerland, I don't know if you were able to hear her as you were getting hooked up, was talking about. That's the longer-term picture.

A freak heat wave could happen without climate change, but it's what's happening year after year after year after year that, for the moment, has culminated in this, and we don't know where it's going to go next, right?

Andrew Freedman: Yes. You have the long-term climate change influence, which is unmistakable, but what's really happening now is that we're seeing extreme events such as this one. The closest example that I would give for this one in the United States is the Pacific Northwest event of last year, which studies showed was virtually impossible without global warming, without human-caused global warming. The way that I look at this, the way that scientists are looking at this particular event now is that 40 degrees C, actually a little bit higher than 40 C. We're seeing several locations at 40.2, 40.3 in the UK.

Brian Lehrer: That's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Andrew Freedman: Over 104 Fahrenheit. Those temperatures it is thought would be impossible without the influence of human caused climate change due to emissions of greenhouse gasses,

Brian Lehrer: Lula in Red Bank, New Jersey, originally from Portugal. You're on WNYC. Hi, Lula.

Lula: Hi. This is Lula. I am original from Portugal. I live in New Jersey. It has been so hot that people are dying. In a country of about 10 million to 11 million people it's estimated that about 700 people died related with heat wave just in the last few days alone. It's just incredible. My family, some of members of my family like my siblings are saying that they can't sleep, they can't. It's just horrible. This is after a very bad drought. They didn't have any rain last winter and now the heat wave is just horrible. This is climate change, global warming, whatever you want to call it, it's happening.

Brian Lehrer: Lula, thank you so much for your call and that unfortunate report from the front. Is it Spain and Portugal, Andrew, according to your reporting, as I've read, that's having the worst of the death toll from this heat wave?

Andrew Freedman: Yes. It's been in Portugal that we know the most about regarding the death toll because it takes a while to find out the death toll from extreme heat events for a variety of reasons. We do not know the French toll but I suspect it will be relatively high. Most experts that I've talked to on the public health and climate side are expecting a potential for a five-figure death toll from this event, from all the countries that it's been affecting. It is moving into Germany now and some other countries that are not that accustomed to extreme heat. The death toll is highest in those two countries but it's mostly because that's where we have the best idea of what the fatalities were so far.

Brian Lehrer: I guess another indication of how historically new this is, is what we also heard from our caller from Switzerland, that there just isn't the air conditioning infrastructure that we have even in relatively Northern cities like New York in this country because they just don't get these temperatures, or didn't in the past. I imagine that contributes to the death toll as well as just extreme discomfort?

Andrew Freedman: It does. Then you have the issue of, well, if we do boost cooling in these regions, which is probably going to be necessary, you have to do it in a way that doesn't add too much to the energy demand, which is obviously a big concern right now in Europe with the war in Ukraine, as well as increasing carbon pollution. There's that strange effect as well, but the air conditioning rate in the UK is around 3% of households that have it.

Brian Lehrer: Allegra in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Allegra.

Allegra: Hi there. I just wanted to say that, I think we often forget that the government in Europe has the power to pass actionable climate legislation that would help the likelihood of extreme heat and climate disasters. France, for example, is doing that. They're nationalizing their energy industry and investing something, I think 10 billion, in renewables. I think it would be great if the States could do that and the rest of Europe could do that. There's a lot of work to be done but I just wanted to say that.

Brian Lehrer: Allegra, thank you very much. This is happening in Europe, which is generally considered the part of the world that's been most responsive to climate legislation, more so than the United States, more so than China and other major emitters. Where does that intersect with the actual heat that they're experiencing?

Andrew Freedman: In a normal year, I would say that it would give even more support to sweeping proposals. They did adopt a very sweeping plan EU-wide that is going to try to take them off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. This is partly a national security imperative, but also an environmental-related solution. However, what's going on right now is they need enough natural gas to get through next winter because they're expecting Russia to cut them off. They're securing deals from around the world for more natural gas, which is a fossil fuel that releases greenhouse gases when burned. Some of these deals last quite a while, they're not just one-year deals.

There's a fear among many in the environmental community that Europe may actually backslide a little bit in their climate commitments due to greater investment in natural gas. It may only be a slight back sliding but when you're looking at where the science says we need to be in taking action and where we actually are, even slight amounts of slowing down the pace of action have a significant impact on what we're going to experience and the frequency of events such as this.

Brian Lehrer: We have a minute left. Can you do a little more science for us because I know you recently reported on heat domes? What are heat domes and why are they particularly affecting Western Europe right now?

Andrew Freedman: A heat dome can be thought of as this protective bubble over an area. Within that region the air is predominantly sinking and as it sinks, it warms. It also discourages the formation of cloud cover. Then any storm that tries to come into that area gets blocked like a football player protecting a quarterback and rerouted around the region. We're seeing more of these heat domes in Europe in part, according to a recent study, because of shifts in the jet stream downwind of Europe that are allowing high-pressure systems to sit and circulate longer and build up these strong heat domes that then bring you a week to two-week long extreme heat events.

Brian Lehrer: That is our climate story of the week. We thank Andrew Friedman, an Energy and Climate Reporter at Axios on the record heat in Europe. Andrew, thanks a lot.

Andrew Freedman: Thanks for having me.

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