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The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related
to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month,
peaking at about 2,000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when
the minimum temperatures fell by about 5°C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in
mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high
temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself – defined as the June, July and August period - still
comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. “At the moment, the year is
on course to be the third hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998
and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into
second place/' Professor Jones said. The ten hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990.
Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. “The temperatures
recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said.
“It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously
exceptional." His colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in
terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the
extreme heat," said the centre's executive director, Professor Mike Hulme. “It will certainly have left its
mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the
2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. The 2003
heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe."
