Europe experienced two sides of climate change last year, with wet weather hitting western countries while eastern countries became exceedingly dry, a study has found.
Some 30 per cent of Europe’s rivers were subject to “high” flooding last year, almost all in the west of the continent, the European State of the Climate report said. For western Europe it was one of the ten wettest years on record.
Storms were often severe and flooding was the most widespread since 2013, claiming at least 335 lives and affecting about 413,000 people, according to the paper, which was released by the UN World Meteorological Organisation and the Copernicus Climate Change Service .
This included devastating floods in Valencia in October that killed more than 200 people.
The southeast of Europe experienced a record-breaking 66 days of “strong heat stress”, according to the paper, which it defined as a “feels-like temperature of 32C or higher”. There were also an unprecedented 23 “tropical” nights, on which temperatures did not fall below 20C, it said.
About 100 scientists and experts contributed to the report, which also said that last year was the warmest on record for Europe, continuing the trend of it being the fastest-warming continent on the planet.
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The hotter temperatures led to record-breaking rates of glacial retreat in Scandinavia, with glaciers losing an average of 1.8 metres of ice, the paper said. “Glaciers in Scandinavia and Svalbard recorded their highest annual rates of mass loss,” the report said. “They also saw the largest mass loss of any glacier region globally.”
Yet the report also said that efforts to limit and adapt to climate change were gathering pace. Fifty one per cent of European cities now have climate adaptation plans, up from 26 per cent in 2018. These measures range from parks in Copenhagen that are designed to capture rainfall, to nearly 400 shady shelters dotted around Barcelona and a flooding early warning system in Glasgow.
Renewables such as wind, solar and hydro power generated a record 45 per cent of the continent’s electricity last year, up from 43 per cent in 2023. Renewables accounted for about 45 per cent of Britain’s electricity supplies last year, according to analysis by Carbon Brief published earlier this year.
“Think 1.3C of warming is safe?” said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, referring to the level to which human activity has warmed the climate since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
“This report lays bare the pain Europe’s population is already suffering from extreme weather. But we’re on track to experience 3C by 2100. You only need to cast your mind back to the floods in Spain, the fires in Portugal, or the summer heatwaves last year to know how devastating this level of warming would be.
“In a volatile global economy, it is frankly insane to keep relying on imported fossil fuels — the main cause of climate change — when renewable energy offers a cheaper and cleaner alternative.”
