With extreme ​temperatures ​becoming the ​new ​normal, ​we are being pushed to the brink

The hilltop weather station in Telegrafenberg, Germany, has faithfully measured the elements since 1893, clocking key climate data without pause through two world wars and the splitting of the country into east and west. On Tuesday, it announced that rainfall levels in the first half of this year were the lowest it had seen in its 132-year history.

I am writing this week’s newsletter from my balcony in Berlin, just 30km away, where temperatures were forecast to peak at 38C on Wednesday. It is already too hot to think straight – let alone work, study or pop to the supermarket. This famously grumpy city is even more irritable than usual.

Europe, like the US, is struggling through a ferocious heatwave, and large parts of the continent are also threatened by drought. How scared should we be – and how can we stay safe?

All that, after the headlines.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general who has become an increasingly no-nonsense climate advocate, had travelled to Seville for a conference on how to finance sustainable development. The southern Spanish city has been scorched by more than 40C heat for the last three days, and faced dangerous night-time temperatures of at least 25C. His home country of Portugal saw temperatures hit 46.6C on Monday.

“Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new normal,” Guterres warned at the start of the conference. “The planet is getting hotter and more dangerous – no country is immune.”

Doctors describe heat as a “silent killer” because most of the lives it claims go uncounted – few victims drop dead in the sun from heatstroke. Instead, the vast and often overlooked death toll is largely made up of people who die early from other illnesses, such as heart and lung disease, which are harder to fight off when days are hot and nights too warm to rest. Averaged over the first two decades of the century, epidemiologists estimate that heat kills an extra half a million people per year globally.

It is worth taking a second to think about the size of that death toll. Heat kills about 20 times more people than terror attacks and about six times more than war and armed conflicts. It is, however, not as dangerous as cars, smoking or air pollution – the annual death tolls of each all surpass one million.

To make matters worse, heat also raises the risk of wildfires, particularly when combined with drought. They turn lush vegetation into dry fuel, letting fires spread further and burn stronger as they spew smoke that chokes cities and wrecks lungs. The latest drought monitor from Copernicus, which used data from the first 10 days of June, placed more than a quarter of the EU and UK under orange drought warning conditions, with 7.3% on red alert.

Readers of Down to Earth will not need reminding that burning fossil fuels has made heatwaves such as this worse. But conversations among the climate-conscious often ignore what else we can do to stay safe from heat – and experts have been anxious to assure me there is a lot we can do to bring the death toll down.

The simplest advice is to avoid the sun, particularly in the hottest parts of the day, and stick to the shade if you have to go outside. To keep your home cool, close windows during the day and cover them with blinds or curtains. Open them after dark when it’s warmer indoors than outside.

Doctors also urge people to drink lots of water and wear loose clothing – it sounds absurd to mention this, but many people, particularly if enjoying alcohol in the sun, forget to stay hydrated. Because most of the victims of heat are older people, checking in on neighbours and relatives can be a surprisingly powerful way to get people help before it’s too late.

Local governments can also do a lot to reduce the health burden. The thermal energy expended by human activity – cooking, driving, heating homes – and trapped by heat-absorbing structures such as tarmac and concrete adds up to make cities hotter than their rural surroundings. Fewer cars and concrete buildings would help counter this phenomenon, known as the urban heat island effect, as would creating more parks and planting more trees.

Buildings with air conditioning or passive cooling can also keep indoor temperatures safe – though the former comes with a high energy cost. Behind the scenes, governments can set up emergency warning systems that kick into gear as soon as forecasts predict high heat.

Carbon pollution will continue to shatter climate records around the world - from the Arctic poles to the weather station a short train ride away from my home - but the damage this does to people is not set in stone. The danger, scientists from the IPCC (the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change) warned in a landmark review of climate research in 2022, is that the higher temperatures climb, the sooner we reach the limits of adaptation.

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The good news

The bad news

Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers

DJ duo Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar (Bicep) are best known for their “rapturous, 21st-century rave nostalgia”, but a recent new project makes the pair worthy climate heroes.

Ferguson (pictured above) travelled to Greenland’s Russell glacier to record the sounds of melting glaciers for Takkuuk, a collaboration with Indigenous activists that will “bring the momentous struggle of this region – and even the planet – into focus”, as Luke Bainbridge reports.

“It’s easy to switch off with climate change, I switch off myself sometimes,” Ferguson tells Luke. “But if you start telling the story in different ways, different narratives, ways people can visualise it, at least it’s a start. Because for the next generation it’s going to be the focal part of their life.”

Takkuuk premieres at Outernet, London, 3 July, then tours. The soundtrack Takkuuk is released by Ninja Tune and Earthsonic on 25 July

If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email downtoearth@theguardian.com