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Sicily May Have Broke Europe’s All-Time Heat Record


A monitoring station on the Italian island of Sicily hit a scorching temperature of 48.8 degrees Celsius, or 119.84 degrees Fahrenheit, on Wednesday. If confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization, Highest temperature ever recorded in EuropeIt surpassed the previous record of 48 degrees, set in Athens in July 1977.

Although they’ve long been accustomed to the summer heat, Sicilians don’t need an official record to tell them this season has been particularly sweltering.

“I don’t remember such an unbearable temperature,” Francesco Italia, mayor of the ancient city of Syracuse, said in a phone call, near where the station recorded its potential heat record. “It’s so humid you can’t go out after a certain time.”

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, after 10 days of war flames across the country, firefighters in Greece Although the storm was a mixed blessing, it managed to contain most of them on Thursday: Rain put out some of the smoldering fires, but lightning ignited new ones.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said radical changes are needed to prevent and respond to the “megafires” that have raged in many parts of Europe this summer amid record-breaking heatwaves. Mitsotakis told reporters that “everything needs to change”, referring to energy policy and how people treat the environment.

noted rising temperatures and destruction from fires in Algeria, Sicily and Turkey. “This is not just a Greek phenomenon. The Mediterranean is global,” he said, adding that countries should work together against this “common crisis”.

In Turkey, just days after forest fires destroyed entire villages in the south of the country and forced thousands to flee, rescuers struggled to evacuate large numbers on Thursday and find the missing after heavy rain flooded the country’s northwest. .

At least nine people died in the flood that affected three provinces, according to Turkish authorities, and at least five children, including four from the same extended family, are missing in the small town of Bozkurt in Kastamonu province.

Fatih Karaalioğlu, uncle of the children, He asked for help on Twitter. “Our children are under the ruins,” he wrote. “Help us.”

In Sicily, Mr. Italia said residents of Syracuse were experiencing power outages due to the large number of air conditioners running day and night. The local Civil Protection Agency was patrolling the area to assist older residents and was on high alert for blazes that could escalate into the raging wildfires that devastate the vast, arid region each summer.

“As Sicilians who have historically suffered from water shortages, we need to rethink a lot of things for future generations,” he said.

Italian firefighters said on Thursday that half of the fires active in the country in the past 12 hours were in Sicily, where a large nature reserve burned down in the mountains in the north, destroying farms and homes.

“We have observed more frequent and more intense heat waves in recent years,” Antonello Pasini, a climate change physicist at Italy’s National Research Council, said in a telephone interview.

In the town of Floridia, the closest downtown area to the record-breaking viewing station on Wednesday, people were trying their best to keep up.

“We do our best,” said Giovanna Catania, a local pharmacist. “But as humans, we were not born to live in such heat.”





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