Why temperature records are being not only broken but smashed

Hundreds of temperature records have been broken in France during an unprecedented heatwave If you take a look across western Europe at the moment, you'll struggle to find many places escaping the heat. In the UK, temperatures passed 35C on Tuesday – more than 2C above the record for May before this year. This heat would be exceptional even in the middle of summer, let alone spring, the Met Office says.

"Absolutely astonishing," says Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Imperial College London. "Mind-bogglingly crazy," adds Peter Thorne, director of the Icarus Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University in Ireland. France is also in the midst of an unprecedented early-season heatwave, according to its weather service, Météo-France. Hundreds of heat records have been broken around the country. Ireland's May temperature record has been surpassed by more than 1C, while Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland have all faced unusually hot conditions for spring too. The immediate cause of the heatwave is a "heat dome" – where an area of high pressure gets "stuck" over Europe, trapping warm air underneath. But scientists have little doubt that human-caused climate change - largely the result of the burning of coal, oil and gas - has supercharged the heat. Over the last 30 years, Europe has been warming by 0.56C per decade – more than twice the global average, according to the Copernicus climate service. That might not sound like much, but it is a seismic change in climate terms and enough to make heat extremes significantly more intense. "When we have a heatwave it's happening more severely, because it's on top of a warming climate," Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter, told BBC News. "I've been a climate scientist for 33 years and we're seeing exactly the kinds of things that we were warning back then... [although] these records are perhaps more extreme and coming sooner than we had expected," he added.

Key points

• "Absolutely astonishing," says Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Imperial College London.
• "Mind-bogglingly crazy," adds Peter Thorne, director of the Icarus Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University in Ireland.
• France is also in the midst of an unprecedented early-season heatwave, according to its weather service, Météo-France.
• Hundreds of heat records have been broken around the country.
• Ireland's May temperature record has been surpassed by more than 1C, while Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland have all faced unusually hot conditions for spring too.