Popular travel destinations in southern Europe are struggling with major heat waves and severe forest fires this summer. On Mallorca, the German travel stronghold par excellence, the thermometer rose to well over 40 degrees. Other areas of southern Europe even reached over 45 degrees. This situation is likely to worsen as the climate crisis worsens. Do you even want to go on holiday in these regions in a few years?
“In general, you have to be prepared for the fact that it will get even hotter and tend to get drier,” says climate expert Hans-Martin Füssel from the EU Environment Agency EEA in Copenhagen. In addition, many of the popular cities in the south heat up particularly quickly, so that their residents flee to the coasts or to their siestas. Weather conditions also lasted longer and longer in summer in Europe. “A heat wave is not over after one, two or three days, but lasts much longer.” There will also be heavier rains.
According to data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Mediterranean region is already heating up faster than the average for all regions of the world. The temperature there is already 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level, which has led to a corresponding increase in certain extreme events, he reports in a report from 2022. The earth average is 1.1 degrees warming. “Droughts have become more frequent and more intense, especially in the northern Mediterranean.” According to the IPCC, as the 21st century progresses, air and sea temperatures and the resulting extremes in the Mediterranean region will probably continue to rise faster than the global average.
A current look at some of the most popular travel destinations for German holidaymakers – and what the climate crisis is doing to them this summer:
Italy: Italy was confronted with several heat waves this summer, some of which brought extremely high temperatures. The high pressure areas “Cerbero” and “Caronte” led to temperatures well over 40 degrees in some areas – in Rome Italians and tourists sweated at 41.8 degrees in one day and in Sicily over 46 degrees were even measured. Coupled with high humidity, this is not only extremely exhausting, but can also be dangerous. At the peak of “Caronte”, the Ministry of Health issued the highest heat alert for 23 of 27 major cities.
For Italy, the current year is characterized by extreme weather. The spring was dry, followed by heavy rains with flooding. In late July, the weather splits the country in two: severe weather and hailstorms in the north and extreme heat and wildfires in the south. In view of these extreme weather events, Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci recently said that nothing is the same as before.
Spain: Three heat waves rolled through the country by mid-July. On Majorca, the Germans’ favorite holiday island, there were several temperature records recently. In eight communities and towns on the Mediterranean island, July was hotter than ever since records began, according to the national weather service Aemet. In Andalusia in southern Spain, the temperatures are sometimes even higher. And last summer it was extremely hot. 2022 was also the most devastating forest fire year for Spain since the European forest fire information system EFFIS began to record it. According to measurements by the Copernicus earth observation system, an area of 306,000 hectares was destroyed in 493 major fires last year – making it far larger than Saarland.
France: In 2022, France had temperature records in many places and because there was no rain, water was sometimes scarce. There were also forest fires, some of which were devastating, which were only brought under control with difficulty after days. So far this summer, France has been spared a similarly dramatic fate. In any case, the weather in France differs greatly from place to place. While it can get sizzling on the Mediterranean coast in summer, tourists and locals alike can usually enjoy slightly lower temperatures in northern Normandy and Brittany. And it’s also a bit cooler for those who are drawn to the heights of the French Alps or Pyrenees.
Greece: In Hellas, too, one heat wave follows the next, and temperatures are currently climbing to over 40 degrees every day in many places. This is not entirely unusual for the Greeks. The Meteorological Office remembers the heat of 1958, which lasted six days with temperatures of 44.8 degrees. Similar heat waves also occurred in 1973, 1977 and 1987. But meteorologists say that the heat waves are lasting longer and longer, up to ten days instead of two or three. According to the agency, this year’s heat wave is the longest so far.
Because of the prolonged drought, the risk of fire is also increasing, which the fire brigade is currently reporting as the highest “red alert” for many parts of the country. An example of this is the island of Rhodes, where recently thousands of tourists had to be evacuated from hotels and guesthouses as the flames were getting closer. It burned even worse in the summer of 2021 in many places, including on the island of Euboea, where hotels also had to be evacuated. It is conceivable that holidaymakers will avoid the very hot months of July and August in the future and that the holiday season will start earlier and last until autumn.
Austria: The past few weeks have been dominated by summer heat of over 35 degrees and severe storms. As Marc Olefs from the state climate and weather institute GeosphereAustria explains, in the course of climate change not only the number of hot days in summer has increased significantly, but also the number of days with heavy or extreme rain. In higher Alpine regions, heat is less of a problem. However, above 2600 meters the danger of falling rocks increases for mountaineers because of the thawing permafrost. Fortunately, when a mountain peak in Tyrol broke off for this reason in June, no one was injured. Olefs assumes that the Alpine country can benefit from the extreme heat in other regions. It is becoming more attractive “to stay at a cooler Alpine lake than in the Mediterranean, which is getting hotter and hotter.” In the long term, however, the climatologist sees problems for winter tourism.
Turkey: The summer in Turkey came late but then with full force. According to the weather service, in July the temperatures on the west coast and on the Mediterranean were sometimes up to ten degrees higher than usual for the time of year. In the popular holiday region of Antalya, for example, it got to over 40 degrees. In the metropolis of Istanbul, which has few green spaces, the asphalt heated up particularly well. The extreme temperatures made it difficult to visit cultural cities such as Hagia Sophia. Meteorologists recommend that you don’t even go outside between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. in this heat. Added to this is the extreme drought, which means that forest fires can spread faster and are more difficult to control. In the north of the country on the Black Sea, on the other hand, the country is struggling with another extreme: torrential rain. In 2023 there were already several floods.
Scandinavia: In Scandinavia, too, it was unusually warm in the early summer – but the temperatures in southern Europe cannot be matched in the northern countries. If some southern European regions cease to attract tourists due to the heat, then Germany’s neighbor Denmark and especially Norway and Sweden with their many fjords, forests and lakes could become even more popular. EEA expert Füssel can imagine something similar. He says: “In terms of climate, you might consider whether the North Sea, the Baltic Sea or Scandinavia are more pleasant places than a southern European coast in midsummer.”
