Europe Is Now the Fastest Warming Continent—Report

Global warming has led to the loss of glacier ice in Austria. Photo credit- H.Raab-Climate Visuals

By Catherine Wilson

LONDON, Apr 15 2025 (IPS) - It is now official that the European continent is experiencing the fastest rate of global warming, according to a new scientific report released by Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Last year record temperatures, heatwaves, and floods unleashed a massive toll on infrastructure, cities, economies, and people’s lives and livelihoods in the region.

“Our findings tell us that Europe is the fastest-warming continent,” Florence Rabier, Director-General of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which includes Copernicus, declared at the media briefing. “Heat stress continues to increase across Europe. The heat will have an impact on us, on our health… and it highlights the importance of increasing adaptation across the continent.”

The European State of the Climate Report for 2024 is the eighth report so far by WMO and Copernicus, the earth observation division of the European Union’s Space Programme. And it represents work by 100 scientists from Europe and around the world.

Extreme flooding prevailed across Europe last year, with 30 percent of the river network exceeding the ‘high’ flood threshold. Photo credit- C3S-ECMWF

In Europe, “2024 was the warmest year on record, and the last decade has been the warmest decade on record,” Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the WMO, added. “Every additional fraction of a degree of temperature rise matters because it accentuates the risks to our lives, to economies, and to the planet… action is needed now, today, not tomorrow.”

In July last year, central, southern, and eastern Europe were scorched by protracted heatwaves with multiple days of 35-40 degrees Celsius in countries including Italy, Albania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania. The heatwave was the longest one on record, extending over 13 days and affecting 55 percent of the population. Temperatures peaked above 38 degrees Celsius on more than seven days and, overall, more than 60 percent of Europeans lived through more days than average of ‘strong heat stress,’ the new report claims.

“Last year 45 percent of days were warmer than average in Europe. The duration of heat has increased,” Dr. Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of Copernicus, told media. And “it is the first year of the temperature increase reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, although we have not yet breached the Paris Agreement,” she continued. Rising incidence of extreme heat will also threaten greater losses of crops, freshwater, and the deterioration of terrestrial and marine ecosystems in Europe, according to the IPCC.

The heat peaks were matched by the depth of the floods that saw the swelling of one-third of Europe’s rivers to the ‘high’ threshold mark and the most prevalent flooding since 2013. “The most recent three decades had the highest number of floods in the past 500 years,” Francesca Guglielmo, Senior Scientist at Copernicus, told IPS.

In September, Storm Boris released torrential rainfall and destructive flooding in countries, including Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Romania. In the counties of Galati and Vaslui in eastern Romania, adjacent to the border with Moldova, communities were hit by 150 millimeters of rainfall per square meter in less than 24 hours. Seven people died and 400 were left homeless, with more than 6,000 homes and 300 kilometers of roads swept away or damaged.

Two months later, a year’s worth of rain descended on the city of Valencia in eastern Spain in eight hours and led to catastrophic flash floods. The impact was that of a tsunami, as buildings and vehicles were mangled in the deluge and more than 200 people lost their lives. Economic losses were estimated at 18 billion euros.

Guglielmo told IPS that the excessive floods were only partly related to an observed trend in rainfall in recent years. “In recent decades there has been an increase in average precipitation over northern, western, central, and eastern Europe. In northern and eastern Europe, precipitation extremes have also increased, but the observed trend varies across western and central Europe,” she said. Europe will face a major projected increase in flood risk this century, according to the IPCC.

Located south of the Arctic, Europe’s glaciers offer insight into the planet’s warming as well. Ice cover and glaciers account for about 70 percent of the world’s freshwater and their melting has serious consequences for rising sea levels and greater instability in the planet’s climate system.  The new report highlights that last year there was a major loss of ice in Scandinavia and Svalbard in Norway by 1.8 meters and 2.7 meters in ice thickness, respectively.

“Europe is one of the places where glaciers are melting the fastest,” Burgess said, and “Svalbard is one of the fastest warming places in the world.”

Alongside the human impact, Europe faces increasing climate-related economic losses. From 1980 to 2020, the European Economic Area (EEA) experienced climate and disaster losses ranging from 450 to 520 billion euros.

And the WMO warns that there is no alternative but to accelerate adaptation. “Extreme weather events present increasing risks to Europe’s built environment and infrastructure, which could increase ten-fold by the end of the century,” Dr Andrew Ferrone of the WMO told media. “The risk and level of climate adaptation varies across Europe, but all countries are taking some form of action… 51 percent of countries have dedicated plans and this progress is significant.”

In 2021 the EU launched the European Green Deal, a strategy aimed at myriad goals, including improving the quality of air and water on the continent, reducing energy consumption, protecting public health, and achieving climate neutrality by 2050. One positive milestone is that the proportion of electricity generated by renewables in Europe recently reached a record 45 percent. But WMO and Copernicus emphasize that much more urgent action is needed to address flood risks, especially in towns and cities, and expand the development of Early Warning Systems.

Without a sense of urgency, the predictions are grim. ‘Hundreds of thousands of people would die from heatwaves and economic losses from coastal floods alone could exceed 1 trillion euros per year,’ the EEA reported last year. And in March this year, Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told the ‘Europe 2025’ conference in Berlin that ‘the climate crisis could carve up to 2.3 percent off Europe’s GDP by mid-century, a recipe for permanent recession, meaning continuously shrinking economies, failing businesses and significantly increased unemployment.’

One of the report’s key messages is that, while there will be challenges in Europe to generate the resources and financial investment needed and to motivate a whole-of-society response to climate change, it will, in the longer term, be a smaller price to pay than maintaining the status quo.

IPS UN Bureau Report,