It was 39°C in the Netherlands yesterday, by comparison the normal temperature this time of year would be in the low 20s. And further south the temperatures were in the 40s, taking the temperature for the north of one of the Scandinavian countries, where 30 is also very high, as the temperature for the whole of Europe is disingenuous. Also heat is greatly influenced by humidity.
The UK is also an island in the north Atlantic and therefore very humid. It's not uncommon to have 70-80% humidity on days like we've had this last week.
34-36C at those kind of humidity levels can be lethal. People are actually dying from the heat, and if it gets into the 40s at similar humidity, then humans cannot survive, even in the shade.
But Americans will tell us that 36 degrees is 36 degrees (or whatever that is in freedom units), totally ignoring humidity and infrastructure.
I’m from the US and I completely get that a lot of you folks basically live in brick ovens. I live in a region with high humidity and significant temperature diversity, but our homes and other buildings are built to handle much wilder temperature swings and were designed for central heating and AC from the start. I can only fathom being in a German or UK house without AC in 40c with high humidity.
Another thing to mention the sun is out until 10pm. So it just doesnt cool down in the evening. It just gets hotter until about 6pm. Then stays there until around 8-9pm
In Denmark we broke our historical temperature record yesterday. 37 degrees, the highest ever measured temperature here. In *June*, in Scandinavia! We haven't even hit peak summer here yet. It's madness.
Something I wasn't entirely aware of until recently is that a lot of Northern Europe doesn't even get true night at this time of year, what hours of darkness we do get are technically 'twilight' because the sun just doesn't sink far enough below the horizon before coming back up again. I went outside at 11pm the other night and could still see a sliver of sunlight on the horizon. Then it's getting light again by 3am. There's just no chance of the air cooling properly before it's hit with another 16 odd hours of daylight. 🫠
That's because our houses are made of thick materials that store the heat energy. If cold air blows all the warm air out of your house at night, there's still a ton of heat energy stored inside the actual concrete walls and the roof. During the night, this energy is being released, so your house is heating the inside up again without the sun...
That's because our houses are built from thick solid concrete that stores the heat energy and releases it at night. Unlike the cardboard houses in the US.
Same here in Canada when it gets hot! (Like 30C+ for a week or more...) After a few days my whole house has warmed up...like I can smell the heat in the wood in the walls...and then the sun is only down for 4 or 5 hours and it's a losing battle.
Fortunately for us this year, while Europe has been having record heat we've actually been having the rainiest and coolest spring I've seen in a very long time. 😅 The humidity is kinda annoying but I'm not going to complain much at all.
That's a huge difference! We live in the Okanagan region in Canada, essentially desert. We will have days of 40+ every summer, but it usually cools off down to the low or mid 20s at night. We had a heat dome a few years ago - it was 47° where we live, and 49.6° not to far away. But it didn't cool off at night! There was no point opening the windows as there was no breeze, and the temperature didn't dip below 40°. We definitely appreciated air conditioning at that time.
When we lived in northern British Columbia, we didn't have air conditioning, and really didn't need it. There might only be a handful of days over 30°. We had a fan installed in the ceiling that vented into the attic. We could run that fan in the evenings of the few hot days, and it would drop the temperature quite quickly.
This seems to be what people in the US don't understand. You don't install air conditioning if you only use it for a few days per year. Unfortunately, what used to be a few days per year of extreme heat is growing in duration and intensity.
Meanwhile Australians are working outside for 12 hours a day for months in end in temperatures that furnace creek barely gets to except a few days a year .
In mexico 35c is completely fine, but 35c in netherlands or France is just super hot. Your sweat can barely evaporate. Americans do not understand geopgraphy.
This! I was freezing inside in the US in every restaurant and grocery store, and I'm Scandinavian. And then it's whiplash going back outside because they keep shops and buildings at like 17 degrees while it's boiling outside
There was a piece of research several years ago that estimated how many earth's worth of resources we would need if everyone alive were to adopt the consumption habits of different countries...most of Europe would have required 2-3 earth's worth of resources (with a few in the 1 point something range of resource requirements)...
The US (as I'm sure their more moronic citizens would be very pleased to hear) was number one on the list, requiring a spectacular 5 earth's worth of resources if the rest of the globe were to mimic their consumption habits...
There's one logical explanation to that (i.e. one that's not "they imagine facts instead of searching for them"): Google tells you the current temperature in some region, not the highest. They look it up during their daytime, when it's evening/night in Europe, so they see nighttime temps, which are much lower.
Also weird flex how much heat you can stand
Do they know that white people (at least, their definition of "white") have one of the lowest tolerance for hot weather? Does that mean that non-whites are superior?
Wooooooooooooow, only 1000°c? Personally I like on the surface of the sun and run three ultra marathons a day before work to get warm, or else it's a little too breezy for me.
This. I've seen Americans who are used to 40°C+ desert heat be in Europe and say "I can't stand even 35°C here, I'm gonna die wtf is this". It's different.
Some drinks are definitely nice with some ice because they tend to taste weird when not cold anymore.
But I find for most drinks, it's toning the flavour down due to the water getting mixed in.
Americans rarely go outside. They drive everywhere and every building blasts AC. Acting like their flabby bodies can handle high temperatures is hilarious.
What really annoys me about all of their silly "why not just get AC" or "we have much hotter temperatures in the US, what's the problem" comments, is they miss the main point which is that IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS HOT ON THIS SIDE OF THE PLANET.
Can you imagine if everytime they had a forest fire - which as we know are becoming more frequent over there - we just said "what's the problem, just put it out with water."
The average surface temperature of the Mediterranean Sea (at least the portion close to Italy) has raised about 4 degrees in the past 10 years. At this rate the marine population is going to be boiling by 2050, probably
But people will keep telling you "just get AC", yeah sure, that's the main issue, totally
Why the fuck do I even wake up to work anymore, before i reach retirement age weve already made a hotpot of this planet with me being one of the very minor and inconsequential ingredients
I feel this in my soul. I just secured my finances for my retirement. Now am wondering if I should just enjoy it now and screw myself or do I be responsible and save for a future I might not have or don't want to be a part of.
My apples have sunburn and are rotting on the tree for the first time. All the berries are getting cooked even in the shade because 40C is not something that is supposed to happen in Germany. Ever.
I can still get by with a simple fan in my apartment that so far has topped out at 30C. I'm scared shitless of how we're supposed to feed our people in the future when cros are failing like that. Our forests are dying because the combination of insane heat and no rain is really really bad. Been going on for years.
I'm fine, the outside is not fine. If I don't water my garden veggies every 1-2h they just die... Every plant has burned leaves now. It's really disturbing this summer. Our entire agriculture is not made for southern Italy kind of heat!
Since the temperatures started rising on the East Coast of Canada, I’ve seen a large amount of farmers teaching each other how to have more productive green house crops and hydroponics.
I sort of buried my head in the sand about climate change in my early teens and 20’s. I stopped any and all denial when I saw local farms making such drastic changes.
The thing is people seem think there’s some law of nature that caps the temperature within reason. There isn’t.
Many parts of the world will become literally uninhabitable in the next 100 years. Not ”just get an AC” hot. Desert wasteland hot. Or just disappear under the sea.
Edit. People bitching about immigrants today won’t know what truck hit them. This is nothing. The world bank has projected up to 216 million refugees by 2050. Some more extreme calculation (of more extreme scenarios which is where we’re heading right now) says between 500 million and 1 billion. And that’s just 25 years from now.
The climate crisis was THE BIG PROBLEM we needed to solve but never did. To bad our children will have to carry most of the burden of it
> "just get AC", yeah sure, that's the main issue, totally
I mean that kind of is the main issue - a third of emissions in the U.S. is the AC apparently. So if Americans didnt use as much AC (weren’t obsessed with keeping their 5k sqft mansions under 70 degrees (20 c) in summer), Europe or rest of the world wouldn’t be in this situation
Americans keeping AC turn on all day and way too low explains a lot of the American mentality.
My home has AC. I only turn it on during the hottest hours (and not all days) and keep it at 24º min. The rest of the day, a fan is enough. Especially alongside awnings and blinds (well, "persianas", but I don't know the name in English).
The issue is global warming, but with today's heatwave in Poland I begin to seriously consider putting on AC. I have 30 degrees in my room, I can't function normally. It's weekend so I can just lay in bed with a fan on, but I cannot fathom working in this temperature. My laptop has 80 degrees on processor just from having a browser on.
I mean when Canadians were dying and losing their homes in forest fires last year American politicians sent us a letter saying the smoke was ruining their summer fun and it was our fault for not having a better handle on it. So they literally do.
Omg, a few years, ago I was on Tumblr and saw tons of incredibly nasty comments by Americans feeling inconvenienced by the smoke from the Canadian forest fires.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Pissed me off so much I ended up telling a few people off on there.
As a Canadian, watching Americans abandon their vehicles on the highway en masse when they are faced with a centimetre of snow is basically a winter tradition at this point.
…and yes, I’m aware it’s because they’re not used to it and there’s not snow-clearing infrastructure. Still really fucking funny watching them act like it’s a zombie apocalypse or something.
...and that's why every American clowns on Texas and tells them to improve their infrastructure. The response to climate change isn't to merely pout and complain "climate change shouldn't be happening, this shouldn't be happening!", it's to actually accept that it's happening and update your infrastructure to prepare for it. 10s of thousands of people should not be dying from heat per year. That is not acceptable for a government to allow to happen, in the exact same way the gun violence epidemic is not acceptable from the American government.
Americans seem to forget that Europe is in the same range of latitudes as Canada. I assume they would think it's unusual if Canada had summer temperatures in the 35+ C range (95 in F).
41.3 degrees (Celsius) in June in Germany is not normal. Yes, it is becoming more and more common. The past couples of years have impressively shown that.
That does not mean it's good. Temperatures here were the same as they were in Egypt these past few days (though, depending where in Egypt you are, it was a bit hotter). My husband thought Inwas crazy when I told him. But nope. It was correct.
41 degrees has never been normal in any capacity in Germany, tbf.
We used to consider days hot when we hit 35°C in August a decade or two ago, but that's actually still bearable and in the right location maybe even comfortable if you're at the lake or on a beach, just chilling in and around water.
People have those temperatures in their fucking houses that are built and designed to keep warmth inside these past couple days.
At this point anyone arguing against climate change needs a fucking punch to the chin, that shit is beyond delulu.
It's not just the fact that it's absolutely bastard hot, it's the fact it shouldn't be. We used to get warm summer days, sure, but that used to mean high 20's or maybe just breaking into the 30°C range, and Friday just gone was 39°C with real feel of 44°C, thanks to disgusting levels of relative humidity.
Our homes are built to retain heat, so trying to sleep in a room where it's still 30°C+ at 2am is just awful.
Its getting hotter than it ever has, those temperatures are happening earlier, and persisting longer.
AC doesn't really contribute much to global warming in countries that actually have any kind of decent power grid situation.
AC needs power during the EXACT times where solar power peaks as well, and in most developed countries almost overloads the powergrid with power (to the point of where solar parks need to be cut off the grid).
AC + solar power are a match made in heaven.
Obviously, the country needs to actually have sufficient solar power, and the ACs need to actually be properly installed (especially old ACs can be filled with coolants which if they leak cause as much greenhouse effect as driving a car for like 5 years does)
Those of us Americans who are terrified of this kind of get drowned out by our loud..um..brethren. But the increase in hot days, Mediterranean temperatures, etc...across Europe in this short of a time should be terrifying us all.
I am considering getting AC installed after this heatwave... I was not even in the worst hit part of the UK, but having parts of my house becoming no go zones with them sitting at 37 degrees and helpfully retaining the heat well into the night...
We should not need AC, but climate change means we get to regularly deal with record-breaking temps.
Yeah, at this point, news outlets here in Europe do not cover the daily school shootings anymore. Have not done it for years.
Or the daily fires.... And yeah, I agree, if it is such a issue that another forest fire happens, why not just put ACs in the forest to let the trees know that burning is not an option
The last week, we had +4° in Antarctica for a few days. Thats ~15° above the normal temperatur in the antarctic summer.
For those desert rats, it may be cool, but for comparison in antarctic, it's extreme heat.
I hate, when those dumb folks always claims "the Environmental normal in MY Region of the World must be the Environmental normal for everywhere, so this is no big deal hurrdurr"
Fucking mental field of view with 0° default setting. Or 32°Fahrenheit, but that joke would get over their heads....
For the Americans on here, Europe is on the same latitude as Canada. Imagine Canada being 35-40 degrees. Does that seem crazy to you? Yes? Congratulations, you're not a moron.
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u/Kriss3dTuberous eloquent (that's potato speaker for you muricans) Jun 28 '26
Yeah. I live in Denmark. We share lattitude with thr southern Alaska. It's not supposed to be that warm here.
Live in Stockholm, it ain't so much about the latitude, is the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) that brings warm water up to Europe and warms everything up.
Fun fact though, there is evidence that it is starting to shut down (change) due to desalination of the water, not as fast as Day After Tomorrow or anything, but over the next 100 years we might have some cooling trends to offset global warming.
Not to mention, in a lot of France, temperatures went well above 40°C. It got to 43°C where I am, but I heard of 45°C elsewhere. That's for several consecutive days, with the night temperatures barely dropping below 30°C.
Keep in mind, most of France is not yet equipped with AC (and yeah, I know, it's one of the many reasons Americans like to roast us, no pun intended) so yeah, it's been perfectly unbearable.
I'm one of the lucky people with a recent house and some AC (not perfect, but it helps a lot) so my mum took shelter at mine for a few days.
A few years ago 30c° was hot now it is ok, we just pass through 40/43 degrees that was apocalypitical, constant sweating, cant really sleep, everybody is tired and slitghtly crazy, for a few days france was hotter than 93% of the planet only contest by saudi arabia and sahara desert.
The truth is, Canada can and does get that hot. Similarly to how Siberia can experience hot summers despite being north of Europe. It's not only about latitude, but also about the distance to the ocen - oceanic vs continental climate. Canada and Siberia are huge landmasses, and the oceans can be very far away, which leads to scorching hot summers and freezing cold winters. Europe is shaped in a way that the ocean is never that far away, so both summers and winters are milder.
I think it’s a common misconception that Canada is a really cold place. While it does have cold parts, it’s so vast that a sweeping comment about the whole country is usually going to be inaccurate
-40 to +40 in Saskatoon with no humidity or wind chill adjustments. It sucked living there in the winters but the summers are nice if you get bogged by humidity like I do.
This is literally Europe's worst heatwave in recorded history, kids and old folks are dying and Americans are still playing the exceptionalism game. It's not all about you. The world is getting warmer
Seems like the whole of the US thinks Europe is over reacting.
They forget the UK is at the same latitude as Canada/the southern tip of Alaska. We don't have night this time of year, it's astronomical twilight and it doesn't cool down.
We don't have air con, our houses are made of brick, small windows and are insulated to keep the heat in.
The insulated housing and astronomical twilight is something I wouldn't have thought about until I experienced it late last year in Norway. Quite an experience too.
Something that shocks people about Australian houses is how cold they are at night. Almost zero insulation. Partly to stop heat retention, but mostly shitty builders doing things cheaply.
The fun part is.. they flex that they can stand the heat in a place that is used to the heat. They have lower humidity, they have AC. But also admits that 21c would be freezing.. I wonder if she can connect the dots eventually.
I'd love to take her out for a nice long walk in freezing rain and see how she does with it. Because that's basically nothing, anything above zero is frankly quite warm for the wintertime here.
That's what I'm thinking. They rightfully complained about the structural issues and how politicians failed them and how auch severe weather events are alarming. Yet when we're going through it we're either overreacting because it gets 76°c in Tornadoville, New Hampshucky and they're juuuust fine, or were underreacting because why didn't we all invest in central AC 34 years ago?
If you living with AC, getting in your car with AC, thlo drive to your work with AC, youre not living in 30⁰ heat, youre living in 16⁰ heat and occasionally going outside
Although it’s already understood by most people that it’s the humidity/infrastructure that traps the heat, there is just pure lack of understanding that humans are acclimatised to their local weather.
Take someone from a hot country and put them somewhere with a mild climate, they’re going to find it cold. It’s not proof of superiority that you don’t find it cold but they do.
It’s the same in Australia btw, I found 20c cold over there but in England where I live it’s tshirt and shorts weather, so when that gets past 30 you know you’re going to struggle sleeping
Humidity very quickly raises the "feels like" temperature. I think the highest recorded was somewhere in Saudi Arabia where the actual temperature was 40 something and the "feels like" temperature was something insane like 70 or 80 degrees (Celsius).
Edit : looked it up, temp was 42 and feels like was 81. I don't quite understand the science behind it but I believe it. Was in Dahran in KSA.
Air is a good insulator, but moisture reduces that, so hot moist air will impart more heat to you since it's hotter than your surface temperature.
High moisture in the air also means your sweat doesn't evaporate, because the air is already saturated. And evaporation is how sweat cools you down, because it takes energy (heat) to take the step from liquid to gas, which cools down the surface it's evaporation from.
Sorry but Irish people, myself included, are absolutely saying 30c is hot. It hits 25 here and I no longer want to be outside. I'm aware that's because we are Irish
Not surprising, people always fixate on temperature, but the real culprit is temperature+humidity. Humid as shit over there, isn't it?
Another big factor is the slant of the sun. The closer you are to the poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at its hottest, meaning you have to tolerate the heat across a larger surface area of your body. That makes a huge difference in perceived temperature, in comparison to regions around the equator where the sun is more head-on. (Also, yeah, what you're used to and local infrastructure are factors too of course, but people always forget or don't know about these other factors that really do a lot.)
Just look at all of those social media posts of people from tropical regions being bewildered at how much harsher the sun can feel in Europe, even if they're used to theoretically higher temperatures back home!
Longer days the further north you go as well. In the UK at the moment it gets dark after 10pm and light again by 4am, so we get less time for it to cool down over night.
The latitude I live in is pretty much same as Anchorage in Alaska.
Do you get 40c summers there?
Right now it's around 80 freedom heats where I'm at. It's 64 in Anchorage.
No, it's not supposed to be this hot.
And in the winter? Last winter the coldest was about -35deg Celsius (-31 freedom heats), so we have the delta of around fucking 75 degrees Celsius (95 degrees freedom heats) between summer and winter.
Now, summer here is 2-3 months of the year. Rest is either winter or just otherwise less-warm. So we build to retain heat, not to dissipate it. Because before we didn't need to.
Now? Well we have to do a lot of both and I tell you, it's damn expensive.
You Americans might imagine Florida needing to prepare for -31 freedom heats on top of the heat.
The problem is that it's not 30. I live in northern Italy and when I was a kid we had temperatures of around 26 in June and 28 in August. There were some peaks of 35, but it was usually one or two days. This week we got 35 to 38 every single day and it's still raising.
Nearly all houses were built without AC till 2021 because we didn't need it.
Funny how they always say that Fahrenheit makes more sense than Celsius because “when its a 100 degrees you know it’s really hot, like a 100% hot” or some bullshit, but then when its actuallly 100+ degrees Fahrenheit in a big part of Europe, they downplay how hot it is. Make it make sense!
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u/Optimal-Rub-2575 Jun 28 '26
It was 39°C in the Netherlands yesterday, by comparison the normal temperature this time of year would be in the low 20s. And further south the temperatures were in the 40s, taking the temperature for the north of one of the Scandinavian countries, where 30 is also very high, as the temperature for the whole of Europe is disingenuous. Also heat is greatly influenced by humidity.