There used to be places to go to escape the heat on our summer vacations. You could venture to Norway to see its world-famous fjords. A trip to Scotland for a temperate round of golf. Visiting Sweden’s Lapland could bring you face to face with reindeer.
But the Arctic’s icy grip is loosening as the planet warms, and these cool, far-flung destinations are becoming increasingly vulnerable to heat waves.
Extreme heat has roasted tourists across southern Europe from Spain and France to Italy and the Balkans in recent years, but the unusually high temperatures spread way north this summer. Legitimate heat waves have struck countries more synonymous with snowy, frigid weather in the winter and cool summers: Sweden, Finland and Norway.
Wildfires have erupted across Europe and Canada, as heat records fall there and in other more temperate places, such as Japan.
The message the planet is sending is simple: You cannot outrun global warming or avoid its effects, particularly when the areas closest to the Arctic are warming the fastest.
The United Kingdom sweated through four significant heat waves this summer, with temperatures climbing into the upper 80s and 90s Fahrenheit. Drought is becoming a concern there, amid the repeat hot conditions, according to the BBC and Sky News.
Extreme heat gripped Scandinavia and Finland for a two-to-three-week period in July, courtesy of a strong, sluggish ridge of high pressure that favored sinking air, sunny skies and unusually hot temperatures.
Temperatures soared in places where buildings were designed to keep heat in, rather than hot air out. Reindeer stopped grazing in some areas, instead seeking out the shade of villages, affecting the livelihoods of Sámi reindeer herders.
Heat-related illnesses and even deaths spiked as temperature records were smashed, particularly in northern Finland, Sweden and Norway. In a study of how human-caused global warming affected this event, scientists concluded that the odds of this severe of a heat wave occurring so far north have about doubled since 2018.
Such a heat wave is now at least 10 times more likely to occur now than it would have before the rise of fossil fuel pollution — a statistic that is likely an underestimate, researchers cautioned.
Northern Europe’s heat wave was at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it would have been without the effects of climate pollution, scientists with the World Weather Attribution group found. That too, though, may have been an underestimate.
Nordic heat wave
The Nordic heat wave is but one example of once-cool summertime destinations becoming more susceptible to dangerous heat, and countries need to figure out how to deal with it and keep people safe.
Of course, “extreme heat” is relative, and one region’s heat wave may be another’s mild weather. But the impacts of unusual warmth can be deadly, nonetheless.
The July heat wave was Finland’s longest on record, with 22 straight days of temperatures exceeding 86 degrees, the WWA study noted. In Ylitornio, about 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle, high temperatures stayed above 77 degrees for 26 days in a row, which had never been recorded before so far north in Europe.
Mika Rantanen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute said this year’s heat wave was a back-to-back blow.
“Last summer was the warmest in two millennia, and this year we have experienced the longest heatwave ever recorded,” Rantanen said.
Similar, long-duration heat was seen in northern Norway and Sweden, and the longevity of this event set it apart from previous periods/spells of hot weather in this region. Drowning deaths spiked during July as people sought ways to cool off from the heat, said Erik Kjellström of the Swedish Meteorological Institute.
July’s heat “should be taken as another reminder that no country is safe from climate change,” Friederike Otto, a climate researcher at Imperial College London who directs the World Weather Attribution effort, said in a statement.
The Nordic heat wave is just the most recent example of how even typically cool locations are coping with bouts of hazardous heat. The past several years have also brought extreme heat and wildfires to Canada, and unusual spikes in temperature and melting events in Greenland.
Society is working out how to adapt to more flooding, drought and other weather extremes, but recent years have put a new emphasis on the need for even historically cold climates to prepare for heat-related illness and mortality.