London just hit a new May high. Nearly 95 degrees F. It feels like July there. Maybe August. France pushed 99 degrees, Spain broke 100.
Record after record.
There is a “heat dome” sitting over Western Europe right now. Imagine a high-pressure lid, sealed tight, trapping hot air underneath. A giant Dutch oven with the burner turned up.
Climate change is stoking that fire.
Friederike Otto, a climate professor at Imperial College London, calls it obvious. The heat carries the fingerprints of human-made warming. These temperatures were once rare anomalies. Now, they are the Tuesday afternoon forecast.
A study from ClimaMeter released Tuesday puts a number on the shift. The baseline warmth has jumped by about 4.5 degrees compared to the past. This extra heat created a stagnant high-pressure zone. It blocks rain. It blocks clouds. The sun beats down without interruption, heating the ground until the land glows back at us.
Is it deadly? Yes. Seven deaths in France so far, linked to the spike. Our bodies remember winter. We are sluggish, unadapted. The cold is still fresh in our muscles while the thermostat skyrockets.
Otto was not part of the study, but her warning stands. Records will keep breaking. We are living in a world we do not recognize, with buildings that were designed for a different, cooler era.
The infrastructure isn’t ready. Nothing is.
