The climate crisis is taking an enormous toll on Europe, which was ravaged by extreme heat, drought, wildfires and glacier melt last year, a new analysis has concluded.

A joint report by the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that last summer was the hottest on record for Europe and caused more than 16,000 excess deaths, according to the report.

“Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate,” said Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, in a statement. He added that current understanding of the climate system “informs us that these kinds of events are part of a pattern that will make heat stress extremes more frequent and more intense across the region.”

Several countries, including the UK, Spain, Switzerland and Italy, saw their hottest years on record in 2022.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent in the world, according to the report, and has been warming twice as fast as the global average for the last four decades.

The continent was not only hot but also extremely dry, with big implications for agriculture and water supply. Many parts of the continent saw very low levels of precipitation last year, with France experiencing its driest January-to-September period on record. In Spain, water reserves plunged to just over 40% of capacity, the report found

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