In Europe, we are currently experiencing some devastating impacts of climate warming. The world is set to overshoot the 1.5°C upper limit, with emissions still on the rise. While we adapt to the life-changing impacts we can no longer avoid after decades of missed opportunities, will this wake-up call speed up the end of fossil fuels and the shift to a low-carbon economy?
I am writing this in Germany, in western Europe. I am fortunate enough to have a basement, where it is pleasantly cool to work, in spite of the temperature heading for 40C outside. Many are not so lucky. More than 12,500 people are estimated to have died in Germany alone from the excess heat so far this summer.
My windows are closed, because of smoke from wildfires. A few kilometres away, the River Rhine, the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe, one of the continent’s main waterways and trade arteries, is drying up. The water is not deep enough for large ships to transit, others can only carry a minimal cargo. If there is no rain in the next few days, the mighty river linking Switzerland in the South to the North Sea will be cut in two, no longer fully navigable.
The farmers are despairing, with the harvest poor, or virtually wiped out by the excessive heat in southern areas. Food prices are rising.
To the south, in the once cool Alps, glaciers are disappearing rapidly, possibly for ever.
Looking northwards, parts of the Arctic have recorded temperatures above 32C, with traditionally freezing northern Russia experiencing an unusual period of intense summer heat. And Iceblog readers are well aware of the significance of the Arctic for the climate as a whole. Melting Arctic ice means more heat and extreme weather for the rest of us.
Never before recorded
If we needed confirmation of the feeling that we’ve never experienced anything like this here before, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) have just shown us, using satellite data, that here in Europe we have indeed had the hottest June-July period ever since records began. July saw the third and fourth heatwaves since May, now continuing in August. Much of the region also saw the widespread dryness observed in May and June persist and intensify, Copernicus tells us, with exceptionally low rainfall and soil moisture reported for France, Spain, parts of Germany and the UK. Across the dry regions, river flows were much lower than average or exceptionally low. As well as the Rhine, the Seine and Danube are particularly affected, impacting water supply, irrigation and energy production in several countries.
“Persistent high-pressure systems trapped heat over western Europe, the extreme temperatures also amplified widespread drought. As soils dry out, they lose their ability to provide natural cooling, allowing heat to build more readily. This is a clear example of how climate change is intensifying heat extremes, with heat and drought increasingly reinforcing one another,”
said Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF.
These prolonged hot and dry conditions have led to the spread and intensification of extreme wildfires:
“Climate change is increasingly bringing the kinds of hot and dry conditions that favour large, high-intensity wildfires in southern Europe while extending the fire season northwards” said Laurence Rouil, Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) at ECMWF.
“Countries that experience relatively few wildfires may be increasingly impacted by long range transport of smoke, even if they are thousands of kilometres away.”
“But we always had hot spells?”
So there can be no doubt that we are bang in the middle of the climate change crisis, right? I am currently struggling to understand some of my fellow humans. I was flabbergasted by a recent conversation at my hairdresser’s, where someone told me it was impossible to say this was human-induced climate change because a human lifespan is too short to draw that kind of conclusion. The Earth has been covered with ice before, there have been hotter spells, and it will all sort itself out in the end, he told me. “Nature always recovers.”
In spite of the overriding scientific consensus and the crisis we are now experiencing in person, it seems the sceptics are still with us.
A study published in the scientific journal Global Environmental Change recently looked at the social structure behind climate change scepticism amongst some groups in Germany. The authors Katharina Gies and Emanuel Deutschmann concluded that their respondents’ individual economic situations could not be considered the primary explanation for people insisting that all the weather extremes are just natural variation. Other factors, they said, were much more decisive: A right-leaning political orientation, distrust of state institutions, and dissatisfaction with democracy.
Now those are some very serious issues to deal with.
This link between right-wing politics and climate scepticism is in evidence in many countries. With the far-right Alternative Für Deutschland (AFD) party surging in support here and likely to win federal state elections in two regions in September, that does not bode well for the sharpening of climate protection measures this summer’s heat would warrant.
Social psychologist Marlene Altenmüller, a junior professor at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology in Trier, conducts research into science reception. She told the German international media service DW her research indicates that most people in Germany do not have fundamental doubts about scientific evidence. This appears to be backed up by a YouGov poll conducted in June 2026, which found 90 percent of those interviewed believe the climate is changing, 70 percent – a rise from previous polls – that this is human-caused. Here too, the research shows that opinions are split along party-political lines.
Altenmüller says people tend to follow the views prevalent in whichever group they feel a part of. Right-leaning groups express more scepticism about climate change and “people orientate themselves according to their group and its identity.” It’s not so much about the actual content. “Party over policy,” says Altenmüller.
The social psychologist`s research demonstrates that all of us are predisposed to seeing the world through our own filters, the “lens of their own desires, ideas, values, and political ideologies. “Anything that cannot be squared with their own ideas and values tends to be disparaged”, she said. That would fit with many of my own encounters with sceptics.
“If right-wing parties were suddenly to discover that we should in fact take action against climate change, my assumption is that the followers of these parties would also believe in climate change and would support political measures,” Altenmüller said.
Now there’s a thought.
Climate scepticism: a western phenomenon
Jagadish Thaker, senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia, and an expert in climate change communication, told DW.com climate scepticism was mostly a Western phenomenon, observed most in the US, Europe, and Australia. In India and other countries of the global south, climate change is already a question of daily survival, and has been for some time, he stresses. For years now, he says,people in the global south have been experiencing first-hand the ways that climate change is exacerbating problems through rising temperatures and extreme weather events. Consequently, measures to reduce emissions and adapt to changing living conditions are not seen as a matter of political ideology.
So have people here in Germany and other parts of the Western world, not suffered enough yet?
In an international YouGov study conducted from June 17 to July 1 2026 in seven countries – Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Poland, the UK and the US – Climate change does actually rank as the biggest or joint-biggest global threat in five of the seven countries, peaking at 48% in France. It took second place in Poland and the USA.
A study by the BertelsmannStiftung and the Research Institute for Sustainability published on August 13 found that 80 percent of people in Germany are concerned about climate change. 54 percent wish to see more government spending on climate protection, and 56 percent support further measures for the energy, transport, and heating transitions. However, comparisons with previous years reveal that public support has declined slightly. Possible reasons for this include the current economic situation and increasing financial burdens, as well as diminishing trust in the government’s ability to implement effective policies.
No respite
Global average temperatures are likely to continue at or near record levels in the next five years, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), published at the end of May. Arctic temperature anomalies are expected to continue to be higher than the global mean,
Annual global mean near-surface temperatures during 2026–2030 are predicted to range between 1.3°C and 1.9°C above the 1850-1900 average. It is likely (86% chance) that one year between 2026 and 2030 will surpass 2024 as the warmest year on record, according to the update.
It is very likely (91% chance) that the global mean near-surface temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average levels for at least one year between 2026 and 2030. This level was already temporarily exceeded in 2024.
What happened to the 1.5°C limit?
After years of pushing for global warming to be limited to an absolute top of 1.5C compared to pre-industrial times, I am shocked to see how the world is easing into accepting that there is now no way we can achieve that. There is no outcry, just a sense of inevitability. We have been pointing out what we would (have) need(ed) to do – and that it was possible – for so long. This abject failure means we are going to overshoot that target and can only figure out how to limit the damage.
“Our task is to make that overshoot as small, as short, and as safe as possible – and rapidly bring temperatures back down, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this summer in his message for World Environment Day 2026.
At the UN climate talks in Bonn this June in preparation for COP31 to be held in Turkey in November, I attended a briefing about overshoot, and how it will affect our frozen regions in particular. Mirey Atallah from UNEP put it in a nutshell:
“There is no such thing as benign overshoot. Any degree of overshoot brings irreversible risks.”
A study published in 2024 investigated the risk of tipping points being crossed where warming temporarily overshoots 1.5°C, but global temperatures are then brought back down using negative emissions technologies. They found that the longer the 1.5°C threshold is breached, and the higher the peak temperature; the greater the risk of crossing tipping points for the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and the Amazon rainforest.
That puts us in a lot of trouble.
The tipping risk was found to increase with every 0.1°C of overshoot peak temperature, and risk accelerates non-linearly for peak overshoot temperatures above 2°C.
At that briefing in Bonn, hosted by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and partners, I was worried to find that several of the scientists present were looking at different scenarios depending on whether peak temperature could be held to a rise of 3C or not.
Cryosphere impacts
Yet, the scientists have been telling us for quite some time that exceeding 1.5°C will bring not only adverse impacts, but some irreversible losses from the loss of global snow and ice regions. Studies have indicated that 1.5°C is already too high for the polar ice sheets. Mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica has quadrupled since the 1990s and now represents the dominant source of global mean sea-level rise from the cryosphere. This has raised concerns about their future stability and the possibility of more rapid retreat or even collapse. Evidence indicates the risk of several metres of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures, even at continued warming below 1.5°C.
A global assessment of mountain glaciers reveals that even temporarily exceeding 1.5°C of warming will have irreversible and long-lasting consequences for these ice reservoirs, which serve as vital water reserves for many communities. Limiting warming to lower temperatures slows glacier loss and provides much-needed time for adaptation.
With polar oceans acidifying rapidly, many polar marine shelled animals already face extinction under current emissions.
The influx of fresh water from Greenland and Antarctica into the sea is changing ocean circulation. Scientists are increasingly concerned about the weakening or even potential collapse of the Amoc, the vast system of ocean currents that moves heat from the south to north in the Atlantic Ocean, thereby playing a crucial role in regulating global climate. Changes in the Amoc could affect food security, coastal flooding, storms, energy demand, migration, infrastructure planning and numerous other aspects of our daily existence.
No room for gloom and doom
On a more positive note, I talked to Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, who was presenting some ways forward, in spite of the dire straits we are now in. The organisation has published clear strategies for limiting warming, starting from the status quo. Given that the 1.5ºC goal is now out of reach as we have failed to reduce emissions, Hare told the assembled climate delegates and experts, “pursuing highest possible mitigation ambition from now can still minimise the duration and magnitude of overshoot and get temperatures back significantly below 1.5ºC before 2100. To do this, reaching net zero CO2 by or before mid-century and reaching net zero GHG emissions soon after is critical.”
We would have to cut emissions by around 50 percent by 2030 and “get lucky on the climate response” to keep warming below 1.6, Hare said. If emissions are not halved by 2030 but still “aggressive action is taken”, he added, peak warming could be kept to 1.7C. He advocates a combination of rapid fossil-fuel phaseout, accelerated electrification, steep methane reductions and large-scale carbon dioxide removal. Under these “highest possible ambition” pathways, warming peaks at roughly 1.7°C before falling to around 1.2°C by 2100.
For this to happen, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is critical, the ClimateAnalytics CEO stresses.
That is something that worries me, given the controversial nature of these technologies and slow progress on that front.
Unless greenhouse gas emissions fall dramatically, warming could pass 2.9°C this century, which would have catastrophic consequences for life on this planet.
Practical solutions
Debora Ley is a climate change scientist, a renewable energy engineer and a coordinating lead author of the Seventh Edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7), a landmark report on the state of the planet from the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP). In an interview with UNEP, she has some practical suggestions on how to do that, firstly involving the much neglected aspect of energy saving:
“We can improve the efficiency of our buildings by using more insulation, installing heat pumps and embracing passive cooling techniques, which would reduce our need for heating and air conditioning. We can make our cities more compact, lessening the need to travel, which generates greenhouse gases. Finally, we can change our behaviors,including by, when possible,walking and cycling for shorter trips, and driving electric cars for longer ones.”
We need a lot of political will – and consumer pressure – to shift to a low-carbon lifestyle and economy against the “embedded interests that are stymieing the transition to a more sustainable and more equitable energy system”, says Ley.
Every one of us alive today faces a huge challenge and a massive responsibility:
“What happens before 2030 will define the climate future. To keep within reach the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, emissions must fall sharply this decade. The solutions already exist, but they need to be deployed faster and at much greater scale.”
The heat emergency bonus
So how can we build the social momentum to take the world forward to a low-carbon future, and speedily?
Stephan Lewandowsky is a professor of cognitive science at the universities of Bristol and Potsdam. People who have themselves experienced extreme weather events probably find it easier to shift their perspective, he says. For that reason, he is hopeful that the this year’s heatwaves and wildfires will make a difference in areas which previously did not suffer from climate impacts. “At some point, people’s personal experiences matter,” he says.
Common talk here at the moment is all about the governments responsibility to protect us all from the heat. What about pressuring our politicians into adopting policies to stop the situation getting worse and ultimately make it better, for instance by getting rid of fossil fuels and providing alternatives asap?
As I have discussed before here on the Iceblog, we communicators also need to shift the narrative in a different direction, away from the flawed idea that climate action means economic disadvantage or giving up a comfortable lifestyle. And we have to keep pointing to the fact that it is human-induced climate change that has got us into this extreme weather emergency in the first place.
I had a plumber in the house this week, sweating as he worked in the heat. “Everybody is calling for air-con”, he told me – not traditionally a thing in our temperate climate. That, for him, is a business opportunity. But we don’t want to exacerbate the climate problem by using more conventionally produced electricity, he said. That’s why his other current business idea is the installation of solar panels.
Heat pumps, wind turbines, insulation, greening our cities – these are all measures that will improve our lifestyle and stimulate the economy.
There is no point complaining about the high price of petrol and blaming the government because our homes and towns are not built to cope with the conditions caused by burning those very fossil fuels. Let’s focus on the real cause of our heat emergency and get serious about turning things around – now.
