“I was expecting ‘hot’, but not this hot”, 20-year-old New Zealander Ruby Prescott said, hoping for cooler air inside Amsterdam’s main art gallery, the Rijksmuseum. Electric fans flew off the shelves in Britain, and Asian air conditioning manufacturers reported a European sales boom.
In France, the state-owned power utility EDF pledged to spend €80 million (US$90 million) on cooling systems for schools and day-care centres. Most of the housing stock in normally chilly to mild northern Europe is not built to withstand such heat but rather to keep it in. According to the most recent data from the OECD-affiliated International Energy Agency (IEA), issued in July 2025, household ownership of air conditioning in Europe remains relatively low, at around 20 per cent.
“OMEGA BLOCK” HEAT BULGE OVER EUROPE
The heatwave, which has pushed temperatures as much as 18°C above their seasonal average, according to the Reuters Climate Monitor, is being driven by a weather pattern known as an Omega block.
This traps a bulging ball of hot air over regions for extended periods, with cooler air on its fringes.
The present heatwave, which moved up from the Iberian Peninsula towards Western Europe, will begin shifting by the end of the month, hitting central Europe and the Balkans, the World Meteorological Organisation said.
Scientists said the record-breaking heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without manmade climate change, which has made this week’s stifling night-time temperatures 100 times more likely than they would have been even two decades ago. “Over the region studied, this heatwave is the most severe ever recorded,” the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists said in their latest analysis.