Weather of Arabia - Record temperatures across Europe have claimed at least 1,500 lives, with Portuguese authorities reporting more than 1,000 heat-related deaths.
The temperature in Britain exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for the first time in the history of its climate records on Tuesday.
The Met Office said the provisional record, which still needs to be confirmed, was set near midday at London Heathrow Airport, where the temperature was above previous levels of 38.7 degrees in 2019.
At least five people are reported to have drowned in rivers, lakes and reservoirs across Britain while trying to relieve the heat.
A large part of England, from London in the south to Manchester and Leeds in the north, was under the country's first warning of "extreme" heat on Tuesday, which means there is a risk of death even for healthy people.
Stephen McKenzie, a London-based fire safety expert, told ABC NewsRadio that the London Fire Service had been deployed to simultaneous bushfires with hundreds of firefighters on the ground. What "almost no one in Britain has heard of".
"We don't usually see this level of intensity in Britain," MacKenzie said, adding that people in London hoped a cold front from the Atlantic would bring rain and cooler temperatures, and that local communities were still in shock over the damage from the fires. He hoped that the scale of the disaster would prompt the government to re-evaluate its current wildlife strategy and prepare better for the next time.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) believes that the heat wave in Europe may already have peaked, but temperatures may remain above their levels for another week.
“The question everyone is asking in the future is: When will this end?” said Robert Stefansky, WMO's Head of Applied Climate Services.
The head of the Portuguese Health Authority also warned the country of the need to prepare for the effects of climate change as temperatures continue to rise, and said, "Portugal is among the regions of the world that could be affected most by the extreme heat."
A researcher at the Faculty of Science at the University of Lisbon said that the data show that the people most likely to die from heat waves are the elderly, and that the number of deaths in the future will depend, among other things, on the preventive measures that people adopt to protect themselves, and how care homes tend to their residents, And how the infrastructure has been adapted.
High temperatures, as well as persistent drought and poor forest management, have been blamed for many of the wildfires ravaging Portugal.
With wildfires raging in Portugal, Spain and France, authorities have warned of the risk of more fires as severe drought conditions persist.
The historic heatwave, which has been going on for nearly a week, has caused more than 510 heat-related deaths , according to estimates from the Carlos III Institute of Health.
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