The extreme heat wave affecting many regions of Spain, Italy and Portugal could lead to the the historic temperature record in Europe of 48 degrees in the coming daysThe European Space Agency (ESA) warned that on Thursday.

After a spring and early summer marked by storms and floods, with the warmest month of June in world history, the arrival of the anticyclone Cerberus from the Mediterranean threatens to break that record of 48 degrees, which was reached barely two years ago, on August 11, 2021, in the Italian city of Floridia.

Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland are currently battling a heat wave that pushed thermometers above 40 degrees in the first half of July, during which – according to the World Meteorological Organization – the world experienced its warmest week on record .

ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite captured the temperature in Europe between July 9 and 10, based on the amount of energy radiated by the Earthsignificantly higher than the air temperature, which meteorologists refer to.

For example, it has measured temperatures of 46 ºC in Madrid, 47 ºC in Seville and even above 50 ºC in certain regions of Italy.

The current heat coincides with the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, and it looks like more weather records will be broken in the world.

“Climate warming, amplified this year by El Niño, has a strong impact on food production and water availability, as well as on our health”, says Benjamin Koetz, mission scientist with ESA’s mission to monitor the temperature of the Earth’s surface.

In a study published by naturopathy At the start of the week, Spanish and French researchers estimate that high temperatures will cause more than 60,000 deaths in Europe by 2022. The countries with the highest mortality were Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal.