Greece is experiencing “probably” the longest heatwave in its history and around 30,000 people were housed on the tourist island of Rhodes for the night through Sunday, where firefighters spent five days battling a forest fire.
• Also read: On the way to the “hottest July weekend in the last 50 years” in Greece
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Expected temperatures for the whole weekend are expected to exceed 44C in Greece, and not only the record-breaking heat will hit the southern US.
“We are likely to experience a 16-17-day heatwave that our country has never seen before,” Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development at the National Observatory in Athens, told ERT-TV.
In Greece, all archaeological sites remain closed during the hottest hours. Tourists are only allowed to enter the famous Acropolis in Athens until 11:30 a.m. on Sunday.
“We need absolute vigilance (…) because the difficult times are not over yet,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned.
“We are facing a new heat wave” and “a possible strengthening of the winds” that have already fueled several fires around the capital since Monday, he added.
According to the fire department, 46 new fires broke out in the country within 24 hours.
On the tourist island of Rhodes, where a forest fire is still out of control in the Laermon and Lardos sector, more than 20 boats took part in an evacuation operation with more than 1,500 people on Saturday.
According to the local authorities, around 30,000 people were able to leave the threatened areas by all means. There are tourists there, but also local residents who have hid in gyms, schools and hotel conference centers on the island to stay overnight.
On the sea surface, the mercury temperature was 2 to 3 °C above normal, the weather services said on Saturday. Temperatures of up to 45°C are expected in the Thessaly (Central) region on Sunday.
“I’m used to high temperatures. We have them every summer, but the difficult thing this year is that the heat waves follow each other,” said Christos Boyiatzis, who shines shoes for businessmen in the chic Kolonaki district.
progress in the United States
Around 80 million people in the United States will experience temperatures of 41 °C and more this weekend, the American National Weather Service (NWS) has warned.
In Phoenix, Arizona (southwest), which is currently experiencing the longest heat wave on record, they could rise to over 46°C as mercury topped 43°C for the 22nd straight day on Friday.
500km away, in California, Death Valley, home to some of the highest temperatures on the planet, attracts tourists wanting to be photographed in front of a screen showing increasingly extreme temperatures.
Some are waiting for what some experts dispute as the all-time record on Earth – 56.6°C measured there in 1913 – to be surpassed.
A 71-year-old man died there earlier this week and Death Valley National Park rangers suspect “heat played a role” in his death, which under the circumstances would mean the second of the year.
“Heat-related emergency calls are at an all-time high,” David Hondula, director of the Phoenix, Arizona, heat-related division, told CNN.
For the remainder of July, the heatwave is likely to move toward the center of the United States, on the side of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains of the Midwest, according to the American Agency for Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation (NOAA).
In Canada, on the other hand, torrential rain falls on the province of Nova Scotia (east), causing torrents of roads and causing power outages.
“Some regions have already received more than 150 mm of rain,” the weather services state, adding that additional precipitation of a “tropical nature” of at least 40 to 100 mm is to be expected.
July is on track to break the record for the hottest month ever on Earth, not only for the first time measurements have been taken, but for “hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” NASA chief climatologist Gavin Schmidt told reporters.
This isn’t just due to El Niño, the cyclical weather phenomenon that originated in the Pacific Ocean and is causing global temperatures to rise, he said.
For this specialist, extreme temperatures will continue because “we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
Compared to the pre-industrial era, the world is experiencing a warming of almost 1.2°C due to human activities, mainly the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).