Gloria Dickie, Kate Abnett

(Reuters) – Europeans endured the hottest summer on record last year, with wildfires, floods and intense heatwaves hitting the continent, according to a report https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021 by EU scientists released Friday.

Summer temperatures were about 1 degree Celsius above the average over the past three decades, with Italy even recording temperatures of 48.8C – a provisional record for the whole of Europe.

Extreme heatwaves across the Mediterranean caused wildfires that burned over 800,000. Hectares of land in Greece, Turkey and Italy. In the meantime, floods that claimed more than 200 lives in western Germany and Belgium were caused by record rains.

The report, published yearly by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), draws on satellite observations, on-site measurements, and computer models to provide an update on the state of the continent’s climate.

“We are facing a lot of challenges,” said Mauro Facchini, head of the Copernicus Unit at the EU.

According to him, the extreme weather and record temperatures of 2021 highlighted an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent further warming that could lead to more severe weather events.

The last seven years were the warmest ever recorded globally. However, last year was slightly warmer than the previous years due to the La Nina weather pattern, which lowers the sea temperature in the northern part of the planet.

Although countries have pledged to reduce global temperature rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels under the 2015 Paris Agreement, many of them have not made sufficient progress. Last year’s global CO2 emissions rose strongly after a temporary COVID-19-induced dip.

Already, countries are feeling the effects of inaction.

Climate scientists last year found that the disastrous flooding in western Europe last summer was made at least 20% more likely by climate change – reflecting a long-known principle that for every degree the atmosphere heats up, it can hold 7% more moisture, hiking the chance of heavy rain.

Wim Thiery from Vrije Universiteit Brussel said, “This is the most obvious and pronounced change that we are witnessing with global warming.”

He stated that governments have made progress in adapting for such disasters by creating floodplains, but that cutting greenhouse gases emissions is the best and cheapest way to reduce climate risks.

According to the report, the sea surface temperatures for 2021 in some parts of the Baltic sea and Mediterranean were also the highest ever recorded by satellites since early 1990s. “Parts of the Baltic were 5 Celsius above average, which is quite a lot for (the ocean),” said Freja Vamborg, a senior climate scientist at C3S.