Extreme Heat is breaking records worldwide, with forest fires and poor air quality that aggravates the crisis and some areas, including southern Pakistan, exceeds 45 degrees Celsius, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published on Thursday.
Extreme temperatures caused approximately 489,000 deaths related to heat annually between 2000 and 2019, with 36 % in Europe and 45pc in Asia, according to the report.
The impacts on heat health are especially severe in cities due to the so -called “urban heat island”, the excess of the dense areas of the city compared to its rural surroundings, which is an increase in problems as urbanization continues, it was pointed out.
Amid increasing temperatures of the 21st century, the OMM stressed that July 2025 was the third warmer July registered, behind those of 2023 and 2024.
In this July July, the heat waves especially affected Sweden and Finland, which experienced unusually long temperatures spells above 30 ° C.
Southeast Europe also faced heat waves and forest fire activity, with Türkiye registering a new extreme national maximum of 50.5 ° C.
In Asia, temperatures rose above the average throughout the Himalayas, China and Japan in July, with extreme heat continuing until August.
In the week prior to August 5, temperatures exceeded 42 ° C in western Asia, southern Central Asia, the southwest of the United States, much of North Africa and southern Pakistan, with some areas exceeding 45 ° C.
Parts of the southwest of Iran and East of Iraq saw particularly severe temperatures above 50 ° C, interrupting the supply of electricity and water, education and labor.
For the week of August 4, Morocco issued heat warnings for temperatures up to 47 ° C.
Korea also issued generalized heat warnings, since the temperature records of the station were broken in parts of China.
In Japan, on August 5 a new National Temperature Registry of 41.8 ° C was established, breaking the previous 41.2 C record established a week earlier.
Looking next week, the World Meteorological Center in Beijing predicts that heat waves will persist in the same regions, as well as in the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Mexico.
These regions are expected to see maximum temperatures between 38 and 40 ° C, with parts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, North Africa and the southwest of the United States that probably exceed 45 ° C.
As Canada experiences one of its worst seasons of registered forest fires, with 6.6 million hectares burned, the smoke has contaminated the skies and caused poor air quality in several provinces and northern states of the United States at the end of July and early August.
Twice this summer, the smoke of Canadian fires crossed the Atlantic, affecting the heavens over Western Europe from August 5 to 7 and on the center and southern Europe at the end of June.
In other places, Cyprus, Greece and Türkiye have fought against forest fires that forced evacuations and caused deaths. In the United States, a forest fire in the Arizona Grand Canyon National Park interrupted tourism in the iconic site.
“The extreme heat is sometimes called silent murderer, but with the science, data and technologies today, silence is no longer an excuse. Each extreme heat death can be prevented,” said Wmo General Secretary Ko Barrett.
OMM is working to strengthen early heat alert systems under early warnings for all initiatives. In collaboration with global and local partners, it is also helping countries develop heat health action plans and ensure that risk populations receive timely alerts.
WMO is also one of the ten UN agencies that support the call to the secretary general to action in extreme heat, whose objective is to boost global cooperation to reduce heat impacts through economic and social policy. A key approach is to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C above pre -industrial levels, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.
According to WMO estimates and the World Health Organization (WHO), expanding heat health warning systems in 57 countries could only save almost 100,000 lives annually.
“Our network is connecting the science, politics and action so that no community is left in the race to adapt to climate change that will continue to worsen the extreme heat in the coming years,” said Joy Shumake-Guillemot, leader of the WHO climate and health joint program and Co-Leder of the Global Health-Health Information Network (GHHIN).
“This is not just a climatic problem, it is an emergency of public health,” he added.
