AFP

Firefighters battled wildfires in Spain and Portugal Tuesday as Western Europe faced its second heatwave in less than a month which threatened glaciers in the Alps and worsened drought conditions.

The mass of hot air which pushed temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in large parts of the Iberian Peninsula since Sunday was set to spread to the north and east in the coming days.

“We do expect it to worsen,” World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman Clare Nullis told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

“Accompanying this heat is drought. We’ve got very, very dry soils at the moment,” she said.

“The glaciers in the Alps, are really being punished at the moment. It’s been a very bad season for the glaciers. And we’re still relatively early in the summer.”

Last week an avalanche set off by the collapse of the largest glacier in the Italian Alps amid unusually warm temperatures killed 11 people.

Heatwaves have become more frequent due to climate change, scientists say. As global temperatures rise over time, heatwaves are expected to become more intense.

In Spain, some 300 firefighters backed by 17 planes and helicopters were battling a wildfire in the eastern region of Extremadura which has ravaged 2,500 hectares of land, local officials said.

Speaking in parliament, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez promised “more resources” for the fight against forest fires that are being fanned by “the climate emergency the planet is going through”.

– ‘It’s hell’ –

Temperatures are forecast to keep rising in Spain until Thursday, with highs of up to 44 Celsius expected in Guadalquivir valley in Seville in the south.

Spain’s health ministry warned the “intense heat” could affect people’s “vital functions” and provoke problems like heat stroke.

It advised people to drink water frequently, wear light clothes and “remain as long as possible” in the shade or in air-conditioned places.

“It’s hell,” said Dania Arteaga, a 43-year-old cleaner in a shop in central Madrid, her forehead covered in sweat.

In neighbouring Portugal, firefighters were battling a blaze which has ravaged some 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of land in the central municipality of Ourem since Thursday. 

The blaze has been brought under control on Monday but it flared up again on Tuesday morning.

With temperatures set to surpass 40 Celsius on Tuesday in much of the country, Portuguese Prime Minster Antonio Costa urged “a maximum of caution”.

The government has issued a “situation of alert” for wildfires for the whole country until at least Friday, raising the readiness levels of firefighters, police and emergency medical services.

– ‘Vulnerable people’ –

The current situation is stirring memories of devastating wildfires in 2017 which claimed the lives of over 100 people in Portugal.

Local officials in the town of Sintra near Lisbon closed a series of tourist attractions such as palaces and monuments in a verdant mountain range popular with visitors as a precaution.

In France, temperatures — which reached 30 Celsius in much of the country Monday — could spike to 39 Celsius in some areas Tuesday, the national weather service Meteo France predicted.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne urged all government ministers to be ready to deal with the consequences of the heatwave which is forecast to last for up to 10 days.

“The heat affects people’s health very quickly, especially that of the most vulnerable,” her office said in a statement.

Britain issued an extreme heat warning, with temperatures forecast to hit 35 Celsius in the southeast of the country in the coming days.

The extreme heat warning was classified as “amber”, the second-highest alert level, indicating a “high impact” on daily life and people.

Heavy rainfall has flooded several villages in Yakutia, in Russia’s Far East region, authorities said on Tuesday.

Yakutia has been badly affected in recent summers by extreme weather — including wildfires and floods — that scientists say is linked to climate change.

Such extreme weather events are expected to become even more frequent, more prolonged and more intense in the future.

The government of Yakutia said the rains had broken structures around a dam and left a remote village in Siberia “almost entirely” flooded.

Dozens of people have had to leave their homes, it said. 

“Due to heavy rains on July 11, despite the installation of protective structures, a dam broke and flooded the village of Betenkes almost entirely,” the Yakutia government wrote on the Telegram messaging app.   

The small village lies on the banks of the Adycha River in northeastern Siberia. 

“At 7:00 am this morning, the water level reached a critical 1,000 centimetres (33 feet),” the local government said. 

It said 36 homes had been flooded and more than 100 plots of lands. 

A dozen people were in temporary accommodation, while 72 others were staying with relatives, it added. 

The local government published photos of rescuers on a small boat leading horses through the flooded village, surrounded by wooden houses deep in water.

It also said authorities were working to bring supplies to other flooded villages.  

On Telegram it published a video of a propeller plane being loaded with more than two tonnes of food for flood victims in the remote village of Suordakh, in the western part of Yakutia. 

The plane will then ferry elderly people and children from the village to the regional capital, Yakutsk.

Flooding in recent days has damaged 85 houses in Suordakh, where 317 people live, the authorities said. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin made comments earlier in his rule suggesting scepticism about climate change but has in recent years ordered his government to protect Russia from the effects of changing weather.

After unveiling the clearest view yet of the distant cosmos, the James Webb Space Telescope has more to come. 

The next wave of images on Tuesday will reveal details about the atmosphere of a faraway gas planet, a “stellar nursery” where stars form, a “quintet” of galaxies locked in a dance of close encounters, and the cloud of gas around a dying star.

They will be published starting from 10:30 am Eastern Time (1430 GMT), in an event live streamed from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, just outside Washington.

Targets include Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery, famous for its towering pillars that include “Mystic Mountain,” a three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle captured in an iconic image by Hubble.

Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy — an analysis of light that reveals detailed information — on a gas giant planet called WASP-96 b, which was discovered in 2014.

Nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.

On Monday, Webb revealed the clearest image to date of the early universe, going back 13 billion years, NASA said Monday.

The stunning shot, released in a White House briefing by President Joe Biden, is overflowing with thousands of galaxies and features some of the faintest objects observed.

Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, it shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, which acts as a gravitational lens, bending light from more distant galaxies behind it towards the observatory, in a cosmic magnification effect.

Launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket, Webb is orbiting the Sun at a distance of a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, in a region of space called the second Lagrange point.

Here, it remains in a fixed position relative to the Earth and Sun, with minimal fuel required for course corrections. 

A wonder of engineering, the total project cost is estimated at $10 billion, making it one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Webb’s primary mirror is over 21 feet (6.5 meters) wide and is made up of 18 gold-coated mirror segments. Like a camera held in one’s hand, the structure must remain as stable as possible to achieve the best shots.

After the first images, astronomers around the globe will get shares of time on the telescope, with projects selected competitively through a process in which applicants and selectors don’t know each other’s identities, to minimize bias.

Thanks to an efficient launch, NASA estimates Webb has enough propellant for a 20-year life, as it works in concert with the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to answer fundamental questions about the cosmos.

US-China rivalry and an inter-island rift overshadowed the start of a landmark Pacific summit Tuesday, hampering efforts to focus world attention on the islands’ dire climate crisis.

This year’s Pacific Islands Forum is the region’s most important meeting in years, coming after a Covid-enforced hiatus and as low-lying tropical isles run out of time for climate action.

Fiji president and forum chair Voreqe Bainimarama opened Tuesday’s first meeting with a warning that the “runaway climate change crisis” threatened the security and sovereignty of many Pacific nations.

But instead of a singular focus on the threat of rising sea levels and ever-more-powerful storms, a shock decision by Beijing-allied leaders in Kiribati to quit the forum altogether, revealed on the eve of the summit, loomed over proceedings.

Geopolitical jostling between the United States and China has been building since Solomon Islands controversial signed a security pact with Beijing in April. 

United States Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday that she would make an unprecedented video appearance at the summit — usually restricted to Pacific nations, Australia and New Zealand.

– ‘Fight this emergency’ –

Leaders gathered at Suva’s luxurious Grand Pacific Hotel will discuss a strategy to guide the Pacific through to 2050, keenly focused on the existential threat posed by climate change.

They will also debate announcing a climate emergency in the Pacific and whether to endorse a push, spearheaded by Vanuatu, to ask the International Court of Justice to weigh in on nations’ climate obligations.

Vanuatuan prime minister Bob Loughman said Tuesday that the people of the region “are calling on us, Pacific leaders, to take action to fight this emergency”.

But Kiribati’s exit from the forum has sparked concerns about a fracturing of the Pacific’s closely held unity, which gives the region of small island states heft in global climate negotiations.

Tuvaluan foreign minister Simon Kofe told AFP he was “surprised and saddened” by Kiribati’s departure, but was optimistic the nation could be enticed to rejoin.

Last year, Kofe made headlines when he addressed the COP summit standing knee-deep in water to draw attention to the threat climate change poses to his low-lying nation, which may disappear below rising seas in the next 50 years.

Faced with such a threat, his priority at the summit is climate change — Tuvalu will be pushing for a focus on statehood and climate financing. 

Concerns about regional security — brought to the fore by the Solomons-China pact — “draw a bit of attention away from climate change”, Kofe said.

– Security versus climate –

The summit will be a test of Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has pledged to do more on climate and to heal his country’s fractured relationship with the Pacific.

At the last Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting, held in 2019, negotiations descended into shouting and tears as Australia’s former government attempted to muzzle leaders who wanted to issue a global call for climate action.

But Albanese also wants to use the summit to raise his concerns about security developments in the region in the wake of the Solomons-China deal.

Speaking to media Tuesday, the leader sought to knit the issues of climate and security together.

“Our neighbours in the Pacific understand that climate change is a national security issue,” he told a press conference in Sydney.