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Britain saw more scorching heat this week, breaking the record for its hottest day ever recorded in May – twice.
Kew Gardens in southwest London recorded a temperature of 35.1 degrees Celsius (95.18 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, beating Monday's 34.8-degree record set at the same location.
“The fact that we’ve exceeded the May temperature by such an amount really is extraordinary and quite worrying," Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill said.
The UK wasn't the only western European country to break records.
Tuesday was the hottest day in May in France's history. And, neighboring Portugal saw its hottest ever day in May on Wednesday, beating a record set 25 years ago.
The soaring temperatures are the result of a heat dome – a high-pressure system in Earth's atmosphere that stalls over a particular region for days or weeks, baking the area like a massive oven.
Experts say there's no doubt the dome's effects have been worsened by climate change due to humanity's emissions of polluting fossil fuels.
"This record-breaking heat has the fingerprints of climate change all over it,” Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, told The Independent.
“Seeing 35 [degrees] in the UK during spring is absolutely astonishing, but the science is very clear – climate change makes these heat waves hotter, longer and far more frequent," she said.
“This is an unprecedented event with a one in 1,000 chance of happening at this time of year in the climate of 1979 to 2025,” climatologist Christophe Cassou told the French publication Le Monde. “It would have been virtually impossible in the pre-industrial era.”
More heat is forecast in the UK this weekend followed a few days of relief.
Some 175,000 Europeans die from heat stress or heat stroke each year, according to the United Nations.
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