Why Europe melts at 41°C when the Gulf works at 50°C.

Asia, the Gulf and Africa absorbed 45°C and 50°C this fortnight without the kind of collapse Europe is now showing at 41°C and 44°C. People keep asking me how that is possible.

The premise is partly wrong. Heat kills in the hotter regions too. India lost USD 194 billion in labour productivity last year. Mecca lost over 1,300 pilgrims at the 2024 Hajj. The Sahel is warming faster than anywhere inhabited.

But the sharper question is still there: why is Europe dying, and why is its physical infrastructure failing, at temperatures that the Gulf treats as routine? The World Health Organization has now put the death toll across Europe since 21 June at over 1,300. Germany set a new national record at 41.7°C this weekend. Leipzig's entire tram network was suspended on 27 June. Traffic lights in Verona and Berlin started to sag and deform. The Eiffel Tower closed early for four days running. France's SNCF cancelled 71 intercity trains in a single day.

I have written a short study answering the question. Five reasons, in order of weight. None of them is the temperature itself.

• Europe's homes are insulation systems pointed the wrong way. Built for two centuries to keep January warmth in, they now trap June heat overnight. The Gulf solves the problem differently.
• The traffic lights are not melting in the chemistry sense. Polycarbonate has a melting point of 225°C and nothing in Europe came close. What is failing is something else, and it explains why the same product specification works fine in Dubai.
• Steel rails buckle in Leipzig but not in Riyadh for a procurement reason that dates to a decision made in the 1960s.
• The single deadliest variable in a European heatwave is not the temperature on the thermometer. It is the median age of the people standing under it. Italy lost 19,000 people last summer alone.
• The atmospheric trigger behind this heat dome is partly Greenland's meltwater, by a route most readers will not have heard.

The full study includes sourced figures from World Weather Attribution, The Lancet Public Health, Nature Medicine, the International Energy Agency and the World Health Organization. It runs to about six minutes of reading. It is published below.