The northern hemisphere will still suffer, Thursday, July 20, from extreme heat in several regions, sometimes plagued by violent fires such as in Greece. These heat waves are putting “increased pressure” on health systems, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, “hit[ing] head-on those least able to manage the consequences, such as the elderly, infants and children, as well as the poor and homeless”.

According to the European Copernicus climate change service, the first fortnight of July was the hottest fortnight on record, and July is on track to become, globally, the hottest July in history.

Nine departments of the South-East remained placed in heat wave orange vigilance by Météo-France on Thursday: Hérault, Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Var, Alpes-Maritimes, Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud. At 5:30 a.m., it was already 28°C in Cogolin (Var), 25°C in Marignane (Bouches-du-Rhône) or 23°C in Nîmes (Gard).

In these departments, “temperatures will still often exceed 35°C, often reaching 36-38°C”, warns the meteorological service, adding that nighttime temperatures “will remain very high, with minimums often between 22 and 26°C”.

“The temperatures we are experiencing at the moment are not normal temperatures”, but “the proof of this climate disruption which unfortunately is accelerating”, reaffirmed the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, on RMC on Tuesday.

Hundreds of firefighters are still battling wildfires Thursday in Greece. The fires west of Athens have calmed down, while they continue to rage on the island of Rhodes, located in the south-east of the country, in the Aegean Sea. Temperatures will remain very high from Thursday to Sunday with peaks of 43°C expected in the center of the country. All archaeological sites in Greece, including the Acropolis of Athens, will remain closed from Thursday to Sunday during the hottest hours of the day – from noon to 5:30 p.m. – due to a new heatwave episode, announced the Greek Ministry of Culture. In addition, due to a work stoppage by the Acropolis guardians already announced, it will remain closed until the end of the day from Thursday to Sunday.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called on Thursday for “absolute vigilance (…) because the difficult times have not passed”. “We are facing a new heat wave” and “a possible strengthening of winds” which have caused several violent fires around Athens since Monday, warned the head of government visiting the Ministry of the environment.

Twenty cities in Italy are on red alert, from Bolzano at the foot of the Alps to Palermo in Sicily, but also Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples or Cagliari in Sardinia. In Rome, the mercury reached 40°C, just below the local record of 40.5°C dating from August 2007. Early Tuesday afternoon, the highest temperature recorded in Italy – which holds the heat record for continental Europe with 48.8°C in Sicily on August 11, 2021 – was 44°C in Ragusa, in the same region.

The south and north-east of Spain are also crushed by the heat. According to the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet), temperatures reached 45.3°C in Figueres, Catalonia (Northeast), and 43.7°C in the Balearic Islands.

According to readings carried out by Aemet on all Spanish coastal areas, the temperature of the water by the sea reached an average of 24.6°C in mid-July in the country, i.e. 2.2°C more than the normal season. This figure “greatly” exceeds previous records of 2015 (24°C) and 2022 (23.7°C) and “has no precedent” for this time of year since records began in 1940, Aemet said.

In the United States, the weather services observe an “oppressive” heat wave in the South. Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, broke a record, with its 19th consecutive day of temperatures above or equal to 43.3°C. These conditions have favored several very violent fires in California, leading to the evacuation of residents. The largest, Rabbit Fire, burned some 3,200 hectares.

In Canada, more than eleven million hectares have already gone up in smoke this year, with 885 fires still active, including 566 considered out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.

Japan has issued heatstroke alerts for thirty-two of its forty-seven prefectures, which are experiencing temperatures near the all-time high of 41.1°C reached in 2018.

China set a new record for mid-July on Sunday, with 52.2°C in the arid Xinjiang region (west). Beijing on Tuesday broke a twenty-three-year-old record with twenty-seven days in a row of temperatures above 35°C.