Thousands of people died due to the heat wave
Researchers in Europe say that last summer was the hottest on the continent in at least the last five hundred years. "When you look at the European average, this summer was the hottest beyond all proportion," says Jörg Luterbacher from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
From a study published in this week's issue of the journal Science, it also appears that the European winters are getting warmer. Average winter season and year-round temperatures over the past three decades were the highest in the past 500 years, they said.
Lauterbacher and his team collected data from all over Europe and analyzed the temperature history of the continent.
Their data included readings of tree rings and soil cores starting in 1500. According to the study, there were changes in the weather trends in both directions - towards cooling and towards warming in the last five centuries.
The second hot summer was in 1757, which was followed by a cold period. The year 1902 was the year when the summer was the coldest in the last 500 years.
The researchers identified an unequivocal trend of warming starting in 1977, the peak of which was the heat wave of the last summer.
Authorities in several European countries say thousands of people died last summer due to the ongoing heat wave. The Swiss study did not consider human influence on the climate. "We did not perform an analysis of the impact on humans," said Lauterbacher. "We are not going to determine the cause. We are just reporting the findings." Lauterbacher concluded.
