Extreme weather warning in Europe: A risk zone if mercury tops 40 degrees

Intense heat is continuing to scorch southern Europe this week - with health officials warning people to stay sheltered and hydrated.

Transcript

00:00Winds from North Africa are pushing up the temperatures in Southern Europe, including

00:05in Italy and Balkan countries.

00:09Ace cities in Italy were issued heat warnings.

00:13Experts are afraid this could be the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record

00:17of 48.8 degrees in 2021.

00:22In London, Professor Lewis Halsey and his researchers are measuring what happens to

00:26our body when we suffer from heat exhaustion.

00:30If it goes above 40 degrees, then we're entering a risk zone.

00:34Some people will be fine, some people won't, but this is where problems start to happen.

00:38So the organs of the body can start to fail or at least start to work less optimally.

00:44The reasons for this can be what's called protein denaturation.

00:48So proteins sort of start to, their shape changes and some of them start to pull apart.

00:55You get the very early signs of cooking.

01:00When there's already too much water in the air due to humidity, our sweat has nowhere

01:04to go and it runs off of our body rather than evaporating.

01:09That means it doesn't have much of an effect in terms of losing heat.

01:20Even if the humidity, if the amount of water vapor in the air is high enough, because the

01:26main way that our body loses heat or stops increasing temperature in a hot environment

01:34is by sweating.

01:35Human beings are incredibly good sweaters.

01:37We're some of the best sweaters in the animal kingdom as it happens.

01:41Last week, Greek authorities were forced to shut down the Acropolis as temperatures exceeded

01:4640 degrees.

01:48In Turkey, temperatures on the coast were 12 degrees higher than seasonal norms.