Climate change made French heatwave 'more likely' in hottest June ever

The record-breaking heatwave that gripped France last week was made at least five times more likely by climate change, scientists said Tuesday as other data showed that last month was the hottest June worldwide in history.

Compared to weather stretching back more than a century, the three-day temperature peak from June 26-28 in France was four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than an equally rare June heatwave would have been in 1900, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) team told journalists in a briefing.

Global readings, meanwhile, taken by the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) showed European temperatures were around 2C hotter than normal, and globally Earth was 0.1C hotter than the previous June record.

The heatwave last week smashed national records for the hottest single day as scorching weather spread across Europe from the Sahara. It was so intense that temperatures were as much as 10C higher than normal across France, Germany, northern Spain and Italy, C3S said.

Global warming probably amplified France's devastating hot spell by far more than five times, said Friederike Otto, acting director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.

"Models are very good at representing large-scale seasonal changes in temperatures," she explained.

"On localised scales, climate models tend to underestimate the increase in temperature."
"The likely role is much higher."
"Although this was exceptional, we are likely to see more of these events in the future due to climate change."