Nordic heatwave part of record year that saw temperatures scorch most of Europe, report finds

Scientists find annual sea surface temperatures across Europe reached highest levels recorded, while deadly wildfires set large parts of continent ablaze

Parts of Scandinavia were scorched last summer by 21 days of hot weather that led to ‘tropical nights’ in typically cool countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

The Nordic heatwave that pushed temperatures above 30C in the Arctic Circle in July was part of a record-breaking year that saw abnormal heat sear more than 95% of Europe, a report has found.

Parts of Scandinavia were scorched last summer by 21 days of punishingly hot weather that led to “tropical nights” in typically cool countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland, according to a scientific report campaigners said showed “all the emergency warning lights are flashing red”.

The scientists found temperatures in Europe have risen by 0.56C per decade since the mid-1990s – faster than any other continent on the planet – due to the blanket of fossil fuel pollution covering the Earth.

Annual sea surface temperatures in Europe reached the highest levels recorded, according to the EU’s Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), while snow cover fell by 31% and snow mass by 45% from their average over the last few decades.

Hot weather fueled deadly wildfires in 2025 that set large parts of Europe ablaze. More than one million hectares of land went up in flames, 4.7% more than the previous record set in 2017.

The Iberian peninsula suffered the worst of the wildfires due to a dry summer after a wet spring. Plants grew rapidly before heatwaves turned them into fuel for fast-spreading fires.

In Spain, volunteer firefighters died as they raced to carve out breaks in the vegetation around their villages with little more than farming tools to fend off flames. The burned area in Spain accounted for 38% of the European total.

The heat melted snow and shrunk glaciers in every region of Europe, the report found, with Iceland witnessing its second-greatest loss of glacier mass on record. Meanwhile, the Greenland ice sheet lost 139 gigatons of ice in 2025 and raised global sea levels by nearly half a millimetre, according to the report.

European waters were the hottest ever seen after the fourth year in a row of broken sea surface temperature records, the scientists found. A record 86% of its ocean experienced “strong” heatwaves at some point in 2025, while 36% experienced “severe” or “extreme” heat.

“All the emergency warning lights are flashing red,” said John Hyland from Greenpeace, which has said the EU’s climate targets are too low to fulfill its responsibilities. 

“Either governments take swift and effective action to cut carbon pollution right now or they can continue irresponsibly rolling back protections, placing countless people’s health, homes, jobs and livelihoods at risk.” 

World leaders promised in 2015 to try to stop the planet from heating by more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, a task that requires dramatic reductions in the burning of coal, oil and gas.

The failure to cut pollution in line with scientific roadmaps has pushed global heating past 1.3C. Limiting global heating to 1.5C now relies on removing vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to bring temperatures down.

Celeste Saulo, the secretary general of the WMO, said record greenhouse gas levels had made it “virtually impossible” to keep global heating below 1.5C without temporarily overshooting the target. “What is important is to keep this overshoot as short and as shallow as possible.” In February, the EU’s scientific advisers urged it to prepare for 3C of global heating and described current efforts as “insufficient, largely incremental [and] often coming too late”.

They called on the EU to mandate climate risk assessments, embed climate resilience into all policies and channel more money into protective measures.

Other experts have called for adaptation measures that range from encouraging people to check on neighbours during heatwaves and improving evacuation warnings to redesigning cities with less concrete and more green space.

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