Hot weather will return by the end of the week, after a brief respite from the heatwave, the Meteorological Office said yesterday. Tomorrow, Britain, like several other European countries - including France, Germany and the Netherlands - will officially declare this July to have been the hottest month since records began.
Meanwhile, a new report, published yesterday by Washington's prestigious Earth Policy Institute, has revealed that the last big European heatwave, three years ago, killed a total of 52,000 people, mainly in France, Italy and Germany. More than 2,000 died in Britain.
After a few days of wet and cooler weather sweeping in from the Atlantic, temperatures are expected to rise even further. The drought that has gripped the UK for 20 months - the worst in over a century - is one of the main reasons for the extreme heat. The sun's energy is going into heating up the air and land, whereas under normal conditions some of it would be diverted to evaporate water.
Another factor is that Britain's cool, wet, prevailing westerly winds have largely disappeared. Instead, huge anticyclones have taken up residence over the North Sea, drawing warm, dry air from continental Europe, and even from the Sahara. The same phenomenon was responsible for the cold weather last winter. Again, the westerlies, which bring warmth from the Gulf Stream in winter, were replaced with cold air.
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http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1204511.ece
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