Europe is living in a disaster movie.
Unprecedented temperatures — 47 C in Portugal over the weekend; nearly 40 C in parts of Britain on Monday — have killed 1,000 people. Roads in France are under threat of literally melting. Rail lines are in danger of buckling. Runways at airports are forced to shut down. Wildfires are spreading across several countries as thousands evacuate their homes.
"In some southwestern areas, it will be a heat apocalypse," meteorologist Francois Gourand told the news agency AFP about the heat wave in France.
At one time, this may have sounded like hyperbole, but the fact is every year countries around the world break long-standing temperature records — as was seen in B.C. last year — and then thousands die.
All of this should come as a shock to no one. Climatologists have been sounding the alarm for decades, warning of the increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves and droughts.
As wildfires fuelled by extreme heat rage across France, Spain, Italy and Greece, there was a dire warning issued from the head of the UN at a climate change meeting in Berlin: take collective action now, or risk 'collective suicide.' 2:08
When asked if this type of heat wave comes as a surprise to him, climatologist Michael Mann said in an email: "Sadly, not. We have seen a recurring pattern of a very wavy jet stream this summer. That pattern is associated with the extreme events we're seeing right now in the U.S. and Europe."
When the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released in 1990, it addressed the potential increase in heat waves, stating: "Some scientists believe that in a warmer climate the earth can be expected to experience more variable weather than now, with a likelihood of more floods and drought, more intense hurricanes or typhoons, and more heat waves."
There have been four more assessment reports since then, with the language growing stronger and stronger about how the world needs to limit warming to 1.5 C above the pre-industrial average or it will face dire consequences.
But those reports aren't just talking about the future — at roughly 1.2 C of warming right now, we're already seeing the effects of climate change, particularly in the summer months.
The worst part, Mann said, is that climatologists may have underestimated the long-term predictions of heat waves.