Western Europe records hottest June as heatwaves turn deadly

Western Europe endured its hottest June on record, as a wave of extreme heat broke temperature records, fueled wildfires and was linked to thousands of deaths across the continent, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Thursday.

The climate monitoring agency said June 2026 was also the second-hottest June ever recorded globally. In Western Europe, the average temperature reached 20.74 degrees Celsius, or 69.33 Fahrenheit, more than 3 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average. Copernicus said the regional anomaly was nearly 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average.

Globally, the average June temperature was 16.54 Celsius, or 61.77 Fahrenheit, 0.56 Celsius above the 1991-2020 average for the month. It was also 1.39 Celsius warmer than the estimated June average for the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900, according to Copernicus.

Much of Western Europe was hit by a historic heatwave in the second half of June, after an earlier spell of extreme warmth in May and before another heat episode began forming in July. The heat broke monthly and all-time temperature records in several countries, including France and the United Kingdom, according to national weather agencies cited in the reports.

“The succession of heatwaves illustrates the growing challenge posed by increasingly frequent and intense heat extremes across Europe and the globe,” Copernicus said.

Samantha Burgess, a climate expert at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates Copernicus, said June’s conditions “underscored how profoundly the climate is changing.” She said record temperatures over land coincided with marine heatwaves across parts of the Mediterranean and along Atlantic coasts.

“Together, these records reflect a climate system continuing to accumulate heat,” Burgess said. “The result is increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems and infrastructure across Europe and beyond.”

The average sea surface temperature across oceans outside the polar regions reached 20.86 Celsius, or 69.55 Fahrenheit, the highest ever recorded for June, Copernicus said. Sea surface temperatures also remained at “exceptionally high” levels in part of the tropical Pacific Ocean, where El Niño develops.

Burgess told Al Jazeera that high humidity worsened the June heatwave. “It was extremely humid, which then meant we people didn’t get relief at night. So we had a number of tropical nights in a row,” she said. Warmer seas also reduced nighttime cooling, she said: “When the sea is warm, we get less alleviation at nighttime because there’s no coolness coming from the ocean. There’s no sea breeze.”

The heat also intensified drought and fire risks. Dry conditions in southwestern Europe helped drive wildfires in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, Copernicus said, while drought risks rose in Eastern Europe. In southern France, fires had burned more than 11,000 acres and forced about 10,000 evacuations as of Monday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said, according to CBS News.

The human toll was severe. The World Health Organization’s chief said Europe had reported more than 1,300 heat-related deaths since June 21, CBS News reported. French officials told the network they recorded about 1,000 excess deaths, mainly among elderly residents, due to heat exposure. Al Jazeera reported that thousands of deaths across Europe were linked to the June heatwave, mostly in France, Spain and Belgium.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu previously said dozens of people died from drowning in France during one week in June after seeking relief from triple-digit temperatures by swimming, CBS News reported.

More than two-thirds of Europeans — 410 million people — endured temperatures above 35 Celsius, or 95 Fahrenheit, during the June heatwave, according to an AFP analysis cited by Al Jazeera.

Copernicus said its findings are based on computer analyses combining billions of observations from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations worldwide.