AMN/ WEB DESK
In Europe, the vast heatwave covering swathes of the continent moved steadily eastwards yesterday. Britain and France both saw record high temperatures on Tuesday. Greek firefighters had tackled 390 forest fires in one week, about 50-70 blazes a day. In Poland, the authorities issued heat warnings for many parts of the country, with temperatures as high as 36.7 degrees Celsius measured in the western town of Kornik.
In the northern port city of Gdansk, many residents and tourists headed for local beaches to cool down. Temperatures in Poland are expected to ease on the weekend. In Italy, new wildfires were spotted in the mountains near Bologna and bordering the north of Milan. Local media reports that a fire that began in northern Italy near Carso has spread across the border to Slovenia, damaging an area of over 2,000 hectares. Wildfires also continued to burn in Portugal and Spain.
On other hand, China will also suffer the return of more heatwaves over the next 10 days from east to west, with some cities already issuing the highest level warning today. A sharp temperature spike is expected tomorrow, before building up into heatwaves, defined as periods of atypically hot weather of three days or more. This Saturday is the day of the ‘big heat’ in the Chinese Almanac based on the lunar calendar.
Some cities in Zhejiang province, home to many factories and exporters, have issued red alerts, the highest in a three-tier warning system, forecasting temperatures of at least 40 degrees Celsius in the next 24 hours. The extreme heatwave is part of a global pattern of rising temperatures, widely attributed by scientists and climatologists to climate change caused by human activity. It is forecast to dump searing heat on much of China into late August.