Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years

Mann co-authored a study last year that linked the slowdown in the jet stream—the band of high-altitude winds that sweep around the globe from west to east—to last summer’s unprecedented droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and flooding events across the entire Northern Hemisphere. While temperatures in Europe are nowhere near as hot as India’s current month-long heat wave—temperatures on the Asian subcontinent have reached 123°F (51°C)—most Europeans, particularly in the north, are unused to anything over 85°F. Air-conditioning remains rare. The number of heat wave days in European cities are nearly double those of the surrounding suburban and rural landscape because of the urban heat island effect, said Jürgen Kropp of PIK.

Source: www.nationalgeographic.com