Europe's scorched landscapes seen from space after summer heatwaves

103 pointsposted 9 hours ago
by blondie9x

90 Comments

geremiiah

9 hours ago

I remember in 2010, corporate propagandists were telling us that the effects of climate change won't be felt for a 100 years.

andai

9 hours ago

netsharc

9 hours ago

There's an outdated statement: 50% of the fossil fuel civilization has burned, we burned after 1992. Outdated, so that percentage is probably a lot higher now.

bamboozled

5 hours ago

Famine is going to be a really, really bad way to die.

surgical_fire

3 hours ago

Don't worry.

The last to starve will be the first to suffocate.

bamboozled

3 hours ago

The only alway to avoid would be to listen to scientists …and the masses really don’t like doing that apparently. Feelings get hurt.

snicky

8 hours ago

I just came back from Hungary and Slovakia and it really caught my attention that the grass everywhere was just yellow. I wasn't sure if it's normal by this time of the year, but truely, both countries look like Greece now.

vinc

6 hours ago

Same in Northwest France: I've never seen the grass so yellow, and now the ground is even becoming bare brown. Some tree species are yellowing/browning. With the prolonged lack of rain and extreme heat for the region, it's a summer like I've never seen before. And it's probably one of the coolest of the rest of my life.

s_dev

7 hours ago

Same in Ireland. I think the country grass is fields or near woodlands or rivers is still holding on to its green but urban grass in parks is scorched. I've never seen this before.

Ireland is fundamentally a wet country and always has been.

jacquesm

8 hours ago

Same here in NL. A few drops of rain today, for the first time in a long time.

toasty228

5 hours ago

Southern Slovakia and a large part of Hungary are fucked if it keeps getting warmer, and given their governments there is 0% chance they will even try to adapt their agriculture

fakedang

7 hours ago

Same in Switzerland. Trees have started yellowing a month before autumn.

xnx

7 hours ago

In Spain I drove past fields of sunflowers that were all wilted. Formerly grass fields are totally yellow and crunch underfoot.

bethekind

9 hours ago

Climate change affects geographies unequally. Seems like Europe and the tropics have been the first to suffer, year after year, and with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years, can't help but wonder what is on European minds.

dgellow

9 hours ago

> can't help but wonder what is on European minds

The main thing I have in mind is that human civilization is completely fucked. What is needed to ensure things aren’t too horrible in the next century is so drastic and requires such a global coordinated effort that will never happen. There is no technology or super authority that will magically save us from a climate catastrophe this century.

Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity, and developed countries are ready to sacrifice pretty much everything to the AI compute gods we are truly fucked

H4cks0r1337

8 hours ago

>the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity

I'm pretty convinced that lots of people would be willing to make sacrifices. But not while Mark Zuckerberg is allowed to feed his Angus beef Macadamia nuts on Hawaii and all the invitees fly in separate private jets to COP26 instead of making it an online event.

The message of "sacrifice for thee, but not for me!" should not be underestimated here.

dgellow

8 hours ago

You can only control your own actions. Reducing your meat consumption by like 80% is very low effort. It’s honestly ridiculous that still has to be argued about

watwut

6 hours ago

The ridiculous is that we talk about this individual change nonsense when we should be talking about actual regulations and restrictions of industries.

Yes, hit the biggest poluters who incidentally put so much money into anti-climate agenda. Stop distracting with tiny individual crap.

pibaker

5 hours ago

> >you can only control your own actions

>tries to control others' dietary habits

abroszka33

7 hours ago

Why would I reduce it? Not going to eat less meat so that Zuck can keep sailing on his mega yacht.

qbit42

7 hours ago

I mean, it's a collective action problem. Individual consumption of normal people is a huge contributor to global energy demands / pollution / etc. You don't have to change your behavior but if no one does in the coming decades then we're pretty fucked.

Not to let the 1% off the hook. Por que no los dos

surgical_fire

3 hours ago

You cannot solve societal problems with individual actions.

It's about time to cut the crap that each person can make a difference while governments keep subsidizing all sorts of activities that damage the environment.

I will vote for forbidding beef, but will keep eating it until it is forbidden.

belorn

7 hours ago

Changing peoples culture is about as simple as changing peoples religion. Getting people who eat meat to switch to vegetarianism is like trying to get vegetarians to reduce their land usage by switching to some amount of shell fish or sea weed, the later which is vegetarian but not necessary the kind of plants that people are used to.

It should be much easier to convince people that emission free energy production is a necessity, and yet there is for all practical purpose no such political movement or any political party that actually support the simple fact that producing electricity and heat through burning carbon based fuel is completely unnecessary and should have been relegated as a something past civilizations did. We don't need to convince the world population to change their culture in order to not construct new thermal power plants, only political will and money.

surgical_fire

3 hours ago

> Given the vast majority of the world population still see vegetarianism as a joke and not a necessity,

If it is a necessity, it should be government policy. Make it a regulation.

No change will happen when you switch the focus of necessity from society to individual.

esafak

8 hours ago

AI is more energy efficient and faster than we are. If there is anything thinking needed to solve the problem, it's best to lean on AI.

Hackbraten

7 hours ago

We don't need AI to figure it out. It's been researched to death already. Go vegetarian, abolish fossil fuels, buy less.

The problem is that way too few are willing to change their habits, and legislators have near-zero incentive to enact unpopular rules to help mitigate the problems. AI isn't going to change any of that.

esafak

7 hours ago

Proposing that all of humanity drastically change its habits is a theoretical, not practical, solution.

convolvatron

7 hours ago

well, we managed to construct a narrative where everyone could only marginally change its habits. heat pumps, electric cars, solar panels, carbon taxes. things would have remained unchanged at the high level.

but that was still way too much to ask. I'm afraid that if you insist on reducing the solution space to just 'it magically goes away and no one has to think about it', even the mighty AI might struggle. why don't fire up Claude and ask it?

phs318u

5 hours ago

Lol. Firstly, how we live now is far different to how we lived 100 years ago (people ate far less red meat than we do today for example). Secondly, how the bulk of humanity lives is inevitably going to change drastically. The choice we have is to do it voluntarily and perhaps control how it changes, or wait until core crops start failing in a big way and livestock die off due to prolonged drought and heatwaves.

watwut

6 hours ago

AI datacenters will make it worst. And Musk and Thiel and the rest dont give a shit about planet.

netsharc

8 hours ago

Yeah, conflict is guaranteed. China will probably invade Russia and secure Lake Baikal and vast areas of Siberia. Europe might start shooting at "smugglers" earnestly (sorry to the "collateral damage").

I guess Eric or Barron will follow Project 2025 Edition 10's guideline and invade Greenland to secure their water for USA. And Canada's favorable climate?

wiz21c

7 hours ago

I tell anyone I meet to seriously consider what immigration will be like when anthropogenic global warming will get stronger. I'm neither pro/against immigration but I know many people are scared by immigration (as is demonstrated in many EC countries by the progression of far right parties).

I also tell them to remember that food prices and insurances prices will inevitably go up.

And I won't much more that that because everything else fails (even the death of 1000 persons in my country during this years heat waves just make people say "bah, that's life")

irthomasthomas

7 hours ago

I think you may have cause and affect reversed. It seems to me that fear of migrants grows proportional to the funding of far right parties.

polotics

7 hours ago

Some who think right now that immigration is bad, may later be amongst the ones that decide to emigrate. Then they will know.

spwa4

6 hours ago

Are you somehow under the illusion that countries that "send" immigrants now will be accepting of return immigrants in the future? Whether they be the same people that left or other people coming in?

This is 100% a one way street for most governments.

andai

9 hours ago

>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years

What's that going to look like?

bestouff

9 hours ago

Very hot in summer, very cold in winter.

AngryData

7 hours ago

Significantly colder in the winter. Im not sure how much it would change summer temps though, it could just affect the amount of rain.

afavour

8 hours ago

People might be ice skating on the Thames again.

pvaldes

5 hours ago

>with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years

>> What's that going to look like?

There is a very graphic way to understand the problem.

Some cities in Canada are Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg or Regina.

London and Berlin are closer to the North Pole that any of these

-----------------------

Minimum temperature registered in London -17 Celsius. In Quebec and Montreal: -36 and -37.8 Celsius.

Berlin is a little closer than London to the North Pole but also more continental, so more like Regina in that sense.

Berlin lowest temperature registered is -15 Celsius, and in Regina: -40 Celsius

... And Edinburgh is closer to the North pole than any of these, and a little Northern than Manitoba, where reaching -40 Celsius a few nights is expected each year, and more than 30 Celsius in the summer is normal.

dariosalvi78

7 hours ago

> can't help but wonder what is on European minds

that only a big catastrophe, possibly a global war, will make people think again

KellyCriterion

7 hours ago

other two options:

a) Asteroid strike

b) Arrival of Aliens (in a sense of "evident to everywhone on earth")

throwawayqqq11

7 hours ago

Next year, el nino may hit and the extremes will set new records again. I wonder if einstein was right and human stupidity is infinite. On the other side, we can achieve alot as a society when the narratives are positive.

kergonath

4 hours ago

I don’t think el Niño affects Europe so directly. As a second order effect, sure, but here the heatwaves and el Niño are simultaneous. And this year is going to break records significantly. Again. No need to wait for next year, which could be the tail end of the current Niño, a regression to the mean, or the beginning of the next Niña.

In any case, Europe is warming up faster than the global average, Niño or not.

spwa4

6 hours ago

El nino hit this year and will be back to normal next year:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-13/risk-of-...

But first we get to experience (probably) record rainfall in autumn and winter.

layer8

6 hours ago

The current El Niño hasn’t “hit” in Europe yet. Its effects in Europe will most likely be felt in the first quarter of 2027. I’d assumed that’s what the parent was referring to.

kergonath

4 hours ago

El Niño does not really hit Europe in any way. It influences several things, like the jet streams, but the effects on Europe are very indirect and much milder than in the Pacific. They are also delayed by a couple of months.

RobotToaster

9 hours ago

> with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years

Guess it will cancel out the increased temperature?

undersuit

8 hours ago

The AMOC delivers warm air year round, it cools the UK from the hotter southern air during the summer.

gib444

8 hours ago

> but wonder what is on European minds

UK here. It really feels like this year has been a massive wake-up call, a follow-up to the one of 2022 (and 2018, 2019, 2021...)

Some fire services have had their busiest months on record this year. In an extraordinary (and controversial) move, they convinced the government to use the phone Emergency Alert system to alert the entire country about the risk of fires.

Prior to summer, in the North of England, it was extremely windy and gloomy from September to May. Very very few blue skies. The other day, we went from a 2-day mini heat wave (35c & 28c) to gloomy cloud in 2 days - it's just so bizarre.

We've just had our 5th or 6th heatwave of the summer

A train derailed yesterday due to a buckled rail. Another derailed, cause of which is suspected to be heat/drought related. Luckily no fatalities.

We've had more wildfires than 2022 and drought is more widespread. I often can't have my window open at night when it's 29c inside because of the fires 10-20 miles away. I have no A/C

I'm wondering if our future is gales and grey for 9 months then heatwaves and drought? I know the North of England is historically gloomy, but it 'feels' different of late.

It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have. We haven't built a reservoir since 1990 despite massive population increase. Our rail network is not prepared for heat waves or long periods of drought or long periods of rain or long periods of ice/snow. London buses mostly have no A/C, ditto rest of the country. Many people don't have money for A/C at home - not even sure our electricity network could handle it. And about 100 other issues...

qball

6 hours ago

>It feels like we do not have the money to begin to prepare and fix things that need fixing to continue the life we have.

Oh, you have the money.

You just don't want to spend it, for that would shift the balance of political power in the country towards labor and away from capital, and away from the old and towards the young, for the wages of labor and the young would have to rise.

That's anathema to an upper class and a body politic whose primary objective is controlling the cost of labor, and even the political party that's named after labor has no plan to change that.

This is going to continue until the current body politic is more afraid of dying from heatstroke than they are of anyone else being in charge.

fifilura

7 hours ago

Did Nigel Farange change his mind?

spwa4

6 hours ago

Why would it matter at all? Top CO2 emitters:

Country Share Cumulative Cumulative (Gt)

China 33% 33% 11.4-13.1

United States 11.7% 44.7% 16.0-18.1

India 8% 52.7% 19.1-21.2

Russia 5.1% 57.8% 21.1-23.2

Japan 2.5% 60.3% 22.1-24.2

UK 0.8% 0.3-0.4 (no cumulative figure)

Note that, first, there really is not much point to doing anything if you don't reduce by at least 52% in 3 years or less (less than that, or more time, will not make the difference between IPCC >2 and <2 scenarios). Hence without drastic reductions from the Chinese government (not promises, not "look at our beautiful new solar field", ONLY we're stopping these HUNDREDS of coal mines WITHIN 2 years) you've pretty much already lost, since a lot of countries lower on the list will definitely be increasing, and have declared it colonization for the west to demand they stop. Oh, by the way, you also must convince many African countries to stop that whole "electricity for our people" thing, otherwise the needed reduction is also a pipedream.

Note that just stopping CO2 output does not matter if it just gets transplanted somewhere else. In other words: the only way to make a difference is to stop first coal and then oil from being dug up in the first place, and let the CO2 emissions "take care of themselves". Otherwise CO2 emission reductions are local, not global, and so without reducing coal mining and oil pumping reductions do not matter and will not make any difference to global warming.

The only countries in the EU that have any influence at all is Norway, and they would have to just give up between 20% and 40% of their national income (France and the Netherlands are rounding errors, and Russia is not EU), and that's a typical figure.

And just so we're clear: reducing GDP by 20% to 40% will require a multiple of that in average wage reductions (so let's say at least 50%), without rents reducing by a single cent. You know, to give some idea what you're actually asking for from Norwegians.

In other words: this will not happen, there is no way in hell the governments involved will agree to even half of what's needed. And the UK, in fact all western governments other than Norway, US, Canada and Mexico have no influence and cannot realistically make a meaningful contributions to stopping climate change. And even those countries that can contribute will have to give up A LOT and it won't matter unless you get China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to follow suit.

Oh and if you do get this going, it'll cause a lot of pain in most of the world.

fifilura

5 hours ago

It is still an interesting question since Farange is a part of the global right wing authoritarian network.

Admittedly not including China though

kvgr

9 hours ago

Well in my mind is no one else cares and the EU is holier than pope. We are destroying our economy for promile of world polution and are even shamed for using AC.

Hackbraten

7 hours ago

This narrative is dangerous. If everyone points to their own limited influence and points fingers at the rest of the world, no one is going to act.

kergonath

4 hours ago

It’s the "it’s real, but we cannot do anything about it" rung on the climate denialist ladder. Yes, it is dangerous. It is also mainstream. There are several examples in this thread.

deadbunny

7 hours ago

Could you provide a link to people being shamed for using AC?

layer8

7 hours ago

It’s becoming less, but the formerly widespread traditional view in Europe was that using AC is a frivolous waste of energy that contributes to environmental pollution and global warming.

deadbunny

6 hours ago

Traditionally we didn't have 40c summers that required AC.

layer8

6 hours ago

Indeed, but there is a significant latency between the climate changing and minds changing.

kergonath

4 hours ago

No they cannot, it’s just a right-wing strawman. And something that perturbs some Americans, for some reason. Another "proof" that Europe is a terrible place inhabited by clueless idiots.

throwawayqqq11

7 hours ago

Game theory gives all of us an optimal solution, so we all should care about every bit, no matter the global proportion. Btw. Chians per capital CO2 emission is lower than most of europe.

comrade1234

7 hours ago

I think the cows are very stressed here in Switzerland. I make cheese every now and then - ricotta and paneer. It's simple. I buy the milk from a "milch-Automat" - farms around here (Zurich) have machines where you can buy a liter of raw milk from the farm for cheap. So, the milk I'm using is direct from the cows.

I made paneer a week ago. Normally I can cut it up and brown it and make the edges crispy. But for this batch I got far less cheese than normal and it was wet - I had to let the molded paneer dry out longer than normal. Then when I went to brown it the entire batch just melted into a gloopy mess - that just doesn't happen.

Reminded me of the omen.

tills13

8 hours ago

It's very disheartening as someone who enjoys recreational fishing that the river closures -- typically legally closed to fishing, but otherwise ethically closed -- are getting earlier and earlier. That is, if the rivers aren't straight up bone dry peak summer.

I'm pretty young, too, so I have this, if not worse than this, to look forward to for the majority of my life.

Not to mention here in BC we're up to three summers in a row where entire towns have burned down ... not a positive sign of things to come.

delegate

7 hours ago

My only practical contribution to fixing this issue is to upvote this article.. and write a message on HN.

I'm in Spain.

I really hope that after this summer, people of Europe will wake up and make fixing the climate their highest priority - at home, at work, in politics. We have very little time left, maybe a few years.

I can still see news articles everywhere blaming 'climate change' and 'CO2 emissions', pointing the finger at the oil companies and the likes. But those 'bad' guys are not operating in a void - they supply the products which are in high demand from me and you and our families - our entire lifestyle is built around them. So what needs to change is our life styles, philosophy, economic order .. drastic changes.

Consumerism needs to go, tourism needs to go, advertising needs to go, travel and logistics needs to be reinvented, industrial production needs to drop by orders of magnitude, everything replaced with healthy and efficient alternatives.

How can this be done peacefully is beyond me, it probably can't. We've had precedent during covid, when the whole world stopped because everyone was scared that they're going to die. It's not so different now.

gruturo

6 hours ago

Much of what you suggest is a drop in the ocean and requires people's habits to change in ways people are not happy to listen to - and - again - it's a drop in the ocean. Go vegetarian, it helps the environment - but don't expect anyone to follow, and don't expect it to mean anything.

Massive electrification - production (solar+wind+storage) and usage (EVs, as people won't stop driving no matter what, and heat pump heating and cooling) can be successfully driven with incentives and would have meaningful impact. People love to save money without losing comfort, incentives are ultimately budget neutral on a timescale, and for Europe this also ties into strategic energy sovereignty which is a nice added driver. Vote out and call out politicians not prioritizing this.

Bonus, you get to call them unpatriotic as they reinforce dependence on people who we're no longer on friendly terms with (no matter whether you look west or east)

zzgo

7 hours ago

> How can this be done peacefully is beyond me

What you're proposing (ending consumerism, tourism) is nothing short of revolutionary. I don't imagine that the future is going to be bloodless with or without a revolution.

adrithmetiqa

7 hours ago

I’m convinced one of the best ways is to make the right choices financially easier, and make the wrong ones (much) more expensive. Fully subsidise trains and tax the crap out of flying. Do the same for cars running on fossil fuels Tax carbon heavy foods like meat. Repeat until this starts changing consumer behaviour

epolanski

7 hours ago

Seriously, how do you fix it?

The biggest issue that keeps accelerating climate change is that people buy too much stuff, travel too much, and more importantly eat in a way that is bound to destroy the climate.

Now go tell people to buy less crap, use more public transport and stop filling their mouths with beef and fish every day, good luck.

And even that would merely slow the progress, not stop or revert climate change.

Sincerely this is a disaster, each generation just keeps doing worse than others, gen z may actually be the firsts to really give 2 damns, or pretend better.

nozzlegear

6 hours ago

> Seriously, how do you fix it?

Temporary SO₂ injection to treat the symptoms while we continue to make progress on transitioning to green energy.

Andr2Andr

7 hours ago

Side by side images of exactly the same places one year apart would have been much better than the images in the article - combining left and right part from 2 years. Maybe it's just me, but the satellite images mostly were hard to read

layer8

6 hours ago

They are the same place, you’re supposed to compare using the slider. What bothers me more is that the left and right images seem to have a different color temperature.

brugidou

7 hours ago

There's a slider in the middle you can use to see before/after

Andr2Andr

6 hours ago

Oh! Then it makes sense! Missed that

GoToRO

4 hours ago

good thing is not climate change, that would be really bad...

TacticalCoder

7 hours ago

So in Western Europe we're fucked by first having heatwaves (and fires everywhere) and, indeed, every field around me is yellow instead of green...

And then, when the AMOC shall start running amok, we'll be forever in extreme cold.

Where should I flee?

netsharc

6 hours ago

What, like an economic migrant?

dwedge

8 hours ago

The headline is a bit sensationalist. Scorched means burned not just dry, later it mentions that some of the images are scorched from wildfires, but that doesn't seem to correlate to the one shown under the headline.

undersuit

8 hours ago

Scorched is being used correctly. Fire does not have to be involved, heat does.

AngryData

7 hours ago

In my part of the midwest scortched is correct. People say their lawn is scorched by the sun during droughts.

muvlon

7 hours ago

I'm in Europe, the sky here is literally red at night from fires we are failing to extinguish. France, Spain, UK, Belgium, Germany, Croatia, Serbia are all going through this to different degrees right now.

margalabargala

7 hours ago

The post is the BBC, scorched is the ordinary word used in British english. I agree that in American english it would be more ambiguous.

sajithdilshan

7 hours ago

I mean what do you expect, it's BBC. I'll eat my hat the day they actually report the facts as it is without exaggeration. I wouldn't even trust BBC without verifying the sources. Most of the time it's lying at best and propaganda at worst.

delichon

9 hours ago

Global fire emissions are on a downward trend, with the first half of this year at a record low in this century.

https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/lowest-global-biomass-burni...

OlivOnTech

7 hours ago

We've had the hottest summer ever recorded (since the beginning of 20th century, more than 120 years ago) across Europe. There is no "downward trend), it's going up, and will be for a while.

"Drill baby drill"

Daishiman

8 hours ago

Due to less land clearing in other continents. Did you read the report?