Europe to see third major heat wave this summer, as temperatures soar from France to Scandinavia

For the third time this summer, parts of Europe will soon be dealing with another heat wave. Temperatures will climb some 20 degrees above average in spots beginning this weekend, baking much of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia in unseasonable warmth.

The culprit for the hot weather will again be a strong area of high pressure aloft, or heat dome, that will set up an atmospheric squeeze-play of sorts between low pressure on either side. This will draw a flow of unusually warm air northward.

On Saturday, the heat will begin to crank up across most of Europe before consolidating over central Europe on Sunday. By Tuesday, a bubble of significant heat will pinch off and settle over Scandinavia, while the rest of the dome will settle south and reorganize over the Balkans.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Matthew Cappucci and Andrew Freedman - “Europe to see third major heat wave this summer, as temperatures soar from France to Scandinavia.”

What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer.

Polynesia is gone – sunk beneath the waves. Pakistan and South India have been abandoned. And Europe is slowly turning into a desert. This is the world, 4°C warmer than it is now. 

But there is also good news: Western Antarctica is no longer icy and uninhabitable. Smart cities thrive in newly green and pleasant lands. And Northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia produce bountiful harvests to feed the hundreds of millions of climate refugees who now call those regions home.

This map, which shows some of the effects a 4°C rise in average temperature could have on the planet, is eight years old, but it seems to get more contemporary as it ages (and the planet warms).11 Antarctica is white with snow and ice, on the ground and, traditionally, on most maps. 

This map has turned the continent's western end incongruously green. And only last week did reports confirm that Antarctica is indeed turning green.

Read the Big Think story - “What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer.”

A long story about a short and important river

J

im Smith has been walking the banks of the Ouse for 52 years, since he was 19 years old. For many of those years, he was officially the keeper of the river, hired by the local angling society to watch over the water and its banks. He is retired now, but he still walks and he still notices.

The short, but important
River Ouse.

There are not many left like Smith. He is a man who knows when the winter has turned harsh in Scandinavia because he hears the wigeons outside his window at night, making that little whistling noise as they arrive in the UK in search of milder air; who knows he should stop and stand quietly when he notices two male adders on the river bank and watches them dancing, twining their bodies together in a contest for dominance. Smith knows how the river flows and how the animals who live in it and beside it behave. He is also acutely aware of what is happening around it, of threats and tensions, of the subtle impact of private profit and public bureaucracy. On several occasions while we were out walking this summer, he told me that he was worried, frightened even.

Read this ‘long story’ from the Guardian - “Britain's water crisis”.