40 drowning deaths reported in France as Europe swelters in heat wave

There were 40 deaths from drowning recorded in France over the last week, as people turned to swimming in hopes of finding relief from a scorching heat wave. Millions across Europe faced extreme temperatures on Tuesday, and sweltering conditions continued to hit France particularly hard.

The 40 people who died by drowning since last Thursday were mainly young people, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said.

"It's not something to be taken lightly, going swimming in unsupervised areas during a heat wave," said French Sports and Youth Minister Marina Ferrari, CBS partner BBC News reported, citing an interview with French radio.

Extreme conditions are expected to last at least until the end of the week, with daytime highs above 104 degrees Fahrenheit in many towns.

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• How does France's heat wave compare to the 2003 event?
• How are public services adapting to ongoing heat waves?
• What areas in Europe are most affected by extreme heat?

In a country without widespread air conditioning, schools, public transportation and sporting events have been impacted. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower adjusted its operations for the scorching weather, closing in the afternoon instead of late at night as it usually does.

"Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year," Meteo France, the national weather service, said.

Temperatures on Tuesday will remain high around the clock in France. Meteo France placed 54 departments, about half the country, under a red heat wave alert.

France experienced its hottest day on record for the month of June on Monday, as well as its hottest night ever on Monday night, reported BBC News. 

Meanwhile, several other European countries were also contending with searing heat, including Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. In Spain, temperatures were expected to peak at 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or higher, and red alerts were issued across large sections of the country, according to BBC News.

Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records.

The heat wave is exceptionally intense, coming very early in the summer, "but with a still uncertain duration," the weather service said. It has already been compared to the August 2003 heat wave, when the highest temperatures in over half a century caused an estimated 15,000 deaths, many of them among older people in apartments and retirement homes without air conditioning.

Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service. Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization's Europe office said this month.

The above-average temperatures can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.

Across the English Channel from France, many British schools said they were closing for the day and trains were disrupted as the Met Office, the U.K. weather agency, issued a red extreme heat warning for Wednesday and Thursday, with forecasts suggesting June's all-time daily temperature record could be broken.

Temperatures of around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit are expected in southern England, with up to 95 degrees in southeast Wales. The peak of the heat wave is now forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, when highs could reach at least 102.2 degrees. Conditions are expected to ease by Friday, the Met Office said.

On Tuesday, multiple train operators across the U.K. said they were canceling train services to "ensure the safe operation of the railway." National Rail, which operates the railway infrastructure, urged people to "only travel if absolutely necessary" on Wednesday and Thursday.

Further south on the continent, Spain is facing a heat wave across various parts of the Iberian Peninsula.

Spain's national weather service, Aemet, issued red alerts Tuesday for temperatures of 111 degrees Fahrenheit in southern Andalusia as well as warnings of thermometers hitting 104 degrees in the normally temperate Cantabria and the Basque Country regions along its northern Atlantic coast.

Aemet meteorologist Rubén del Campo said Spain, which has experienced increasingly torrid summers of late, is only going to get hotter because of climate change as heat waves become more frequent, longer and appear outside the traditional window of July and August.

Of the dozen heat waves Aemet has recorded in the month of June since it started tracking them in 1975, half have occurred since 2015, del Campo said.

Human-driven climate change is heating up the atmosphere, both above Spain and in the surrounding sea waters, he said.

Copernicus, the EU monitoring agency, found that in Europe and globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the continent experienced its second-highest number of "heat stress" days.

Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, especially in southeastern Europe, making the region more vulnerable to health impacts and wildfires.