July 2026 – Week 2

By Anders Lorenzen

This week’s live blog will focus exclusively on the extreme heat engulfing the US and Europe with the latter now being in the third heatwave of the year. We will also keep an eye on other extreme heat events around the world as the impacts of El Nino is being felt.

We will track the high fatalities as data comes in and will look at how governments are responding to the heat crisis combined with viewpoints from experts.

It is updated every day throughout the week with the most significant developments around energy and climate.

Last week’s live blog can be found here.

This liveblog is now closed, but you can see our latest and currently active live blogs here.

Latest

Saturday 12th of July 2026

00:20 GMT

Extreme heat: Experts have said that Europe’s third heatwave this year could have huge fatal consequences.

Early estimates suggest that the death count could mount to around a staggering 20,000 fatalities across the European continent.

Thursday 10th of July 2026

13:10 GMT

Extreme heat: In Spain, Barcelona has registered registered a maximum temperature of 40.7 ºC the highest in reported temperature in the Catalan capital for 112 years. Elsewhere in the country, some weather stations recorded temperatures of up to 44 ºC.

Earlier updates

Wednesday 8th of July 2026

23:45 GMT

Extreme heat: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of more fatalities in Europe as the continent is in the grip of its third heatwave in less than two months.

Tuesday 7th of July 2026

17:00 GMT

Extreme heat: At the weekend it was confirmed that in the US, at least 25 people have died after extreme heat engulfs parts of the country.

As a huge heat dome potioned over the county’s eastern half is causing extreme heat that is impacting millions. More than 20 states are experienced extremely high temperatures exceeding 38C.

11:45 GMT

Tour de France: Yet again extreme heat are impacting sporting events.

As a result of prolonged extreme heat and dry conditions in France, several wildfires have broken out which forced organisers of the world’s largest cycling race, Tour de France, to ban spectators on the final parts of Monday’s stage 3.

The iconic race which started on Saturday are bracing for more extreme heat today with riders undertaking just short of 190 kilometres in 40 C through the Pyrenees mountain range which has promoted the world’s governing body, UCI to relax some of its regulations regarding supplies being handed out to the riders.

So far race organisers have avoided cancellations or changes to any of the stages, but this could very much become a reality as the extreme heat is not forecasted to ease in the foreseeable future.

Wednesday 1st of July 2026

13:45 GMT

Oceans: Data released by the EU’s climate monitoring service, Copernicus, show that global ocean surface temperatures in June reached a new all-time high.

The Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) have jointly confirmed that daily sea surface temperatures on 21 June exceeded the previous record levels observed in 2023 and 2024, with El Niño conditions adding to an already significant signal.

According to the UN body, the two services have reached this conclusion independently, using separate ocean and climate monitoring systems built on satellite and in-situ observations. Their results, monitored through the C3S Climate Pulse application and the Copernicus Marine MyOcean Health platform, agree closely, underlining the robustness of the signal in both datasets.

Data from C3S showed a marginal increase to 20.86 ºC this year, beating the 2023 and 2024 record of 20.83 ºC.

CMEMS reported 21.0 ºC – a 0.1 ºC increase from 2023 and 2024.