PARIS: Two children were found dead in a car in France on Monday as much of Europe sweltered through record high temperatures and national authorities launched urgent measures to reduce the impact.

The children, aged two and four, were found in their family car in a residential parking lot in the southern town of Carpentras, where investigators said they believed the heatwave was the most likely reason for the deaths.

Thirteen people drowned in France on Sunday and overnight into Monday as people sought relief from the heat, a spokesperson for the Civil Safety service said, and three elderly people died as a result of the extreme temperatures in the country.

The latest heatwave to hit Europe has seen outdoor events cancelled, transport disrupted, schools shut and office workers told to work from home, as the authorities issued health alerts to protect the elderly and vulnerable.

The number of people exposed to heat stress worldwide rose over the last 50 years due to climate change, according to a study.

Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming, and warn they are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense.

France’s average temperature broke a record for the month of June, forecaster Meteo-France said, as the country closed over 1,350 schools due to the extreme heat.

Average daytime and nighttime temperatures reached 29.2C, beating the previous high reached on June 30, 2025, according to provisional data.

Meteo-France expanded its heatwave red alert to more than half of France’s departments, affecting some 39 million people.

Heat stress

The number of people exposed to dangerous heat stress worldwide has risen sharply over the last half century propelled by climate change, according to a study released on Monday as Europe sweltered through a punishing heatwave.

Heat stress — the name given to the hazardous build-up of body heat caused by soaring temperatures, humidity and other factors — is one of the most common ways that weather kills people. The new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, tracked how heat stress levels surged between the 1970s and 2024.

“On every continent, strong to extreme heat stress is now more frequent,” lead study author Rebecca Emerton, of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said. In the 1970s, for example, 16 percent of the world’s population experienced at least one day of extreme heat stress — when the “feels-like” temperature was at least 46C. Fifty years later, the rate has risen to 22 percent.

“That might not sound like so much,” Emerton said. “But that’s an extra approximately one billion people that are seeing at least some extreme heat stress now that wouldn’t have done in the 1970s,” she added.

The study used the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), which represents the temperature it “feels like”, by including factors such as humidity, wind, radiation and how the human body responds to heat.

The daily average UTCI has been rising as heat stress events become more frequent, severe and longer-lasting due to human-driven global warming, the research found.

Some countries, including Spain, Portugal, Italy and France, are now experiencing “feels-like” temperatures up to five degrees hotter than they did in the 1970s, Emerton said.

For example, very strong heat stress with a “feels-like” temperature of at least 38C has now reached parts of North America, the UK and Scandinavia. The researchers also tracked the global rise of unrelentingly hot nights.

Published in Dawn, June 23rd, 2026