As the midday temperature in Rome climbed to 38 C, about 100 tourists took refuge in a wedge of shade next to the Arch of Constantine, near the Colosseum. Some were carrying umbrellas to shield themselves from the blazing sun. Others sat wilting on the cobblestones. Nearby, people picked up bottles of water from an Italian Red Cross tent with an ambulance parked next to it.
Mary Grant, a sales receptionist from Boynton Beach, Fla., was regretting her visit to Rome. She had assumed that June, the month before high summer, would be warm but not blast-furnace hot.
“It’s hotter here than Florida,” she said. “This is real heat. I felt like I would collapse at one point. I took three cold showers before I left our hotel this morning. Our room has no air conditioning.”
Even Australian tourists were complaining.
“Umbrellas and cold water is how we survive,” said Kirsten Dunkley, a visual artist from Melbourne. “It’s uncomfortable here even by Australian standards.”
The tourists in Rome had it easy compared to those in Spain and other parts of Europe, which is enduring a heat wave that is setting records or near-records for the month of June.
Spain on Saturday set a June record of 46 C in Andalusia, in the southern part of the country. In Barcelona, a woman died of possible heat stroke after sweeping a road Saturday.
Spaniards and tourists were desperately trying to keep cool Saturday, as the country sizzled in sweltering temperatures.
The Associated Press
Heat alerts were in place in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy and Greece.
Even England was experiencing sweltering temperatures. Wimbledon was preparing for unusually high temperatures at the start of the tennis championship. The opening day record of 29.3 C, set in 2001, could be beaten.
French and Greek firefighters were battling wildfires made worse by the heat wave. Late last week, Greece deployed 130 firefighters and a fleet of water-bomber aircraft to fight a blaze south of Athens, near the Temple of Poseidon.
Météo-France, the country’s weather service, put a record 84 of 101 regional departments on orange alert heat wave – the second-highest level – on Monday. Ecology Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher called the heat wave “unprecedented.”
Meteorologists were expecting temperatures of 40 C or greater in parts of Europe this week. In Rome, Red Cross employees were handing out “Heat Wave” brochures published by the civil protection agency. They advised Romans and visitors to stay indoors between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., take cool showers, drink lots of water and avoid fizzy, sugary drinks and alcohol.
On Sunday, the Italian Health Ministry placed 21 of 27 monitored cities, including Milan, Rome and Naples, under its highest heat alert. On the same day, temperatures in the Tor Vergata area of suburban Rome reached 40 C, well above the typical summer highs of about 30 C.
Rome is offering free access to city swimming pools for those 70 and older, and the city of Ancona, on the Adriatic Sea, is delivering dehumidifiers to anyone suffering from the heat and humidity.
Hospital admissions were 20-per-cent higher in the hottest Italian regions, including Tuscany. Many of the patients were elderly people suffering from dehydration.
Meteorologists say a “heat dome” is at least partly responsible for the unusually high temperatures in Western Europe.
The dome is a high-pressure system that traps hot air, acting like a lid. As it shifts eastward, it draws in hot air from North Africa. European summers are getting longer and warmer as increases in heat-trapping gases raise average temperatures above preindustrial levels.
Spain’s state weather agency, AEMET, first warned of a “progressive and notable rise in maximum temperatures” and little precipitation almost four weeks ago. Its own data confirm the warming trend. The agency recorded only two extreme heat waves in the month of June between 1975 and 2000. Since then, the number has climbed to nine.
The last three years were the hottest on record for Spain.
Forecasters at Météo-France have a similar view. Its projections suggest a tenfold increase in extreme heat days by 2100 over the 1976-2005 reference period, with hot days coming as early as May and as late as October.
“The heat waves in the Mediterranean region have become more frequent and more intense in recent years, with peaks of 37 degrees or even more in cities,” Emanuela Piervitali, a researcher at the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, told news agency AFP.
“A further increase in temperature and heat extremes is expected in the future, so we will have to get used to temperatures with peaks even higher than those we are experiencing now.”