Is this the end of the Mediterranean beach holiday?

15.11.2023 - 15:35 / bbc.com

The holiday apartment in Alicante, Spain, has been a fixture of Lori Zaino's in-laws' family since her husband's grandparents purchased it in the 1970s. As a baby, it's where her husband took his first steps; he and Zaino have spent their summer holidays there almost every year for the last 16 years – now with a toddler in tow. Their families may look different each time they go, but each visit, year after year, has delivered everything they wanted from a Mediterranean summer holiday: sun, sand and plenty of beach time.

Until this year. A heat wave scorched southern Europe during their mid-July holiday, with temperatures of 46C and 47C in cities including Madrid, Seville and Rome. In Alicante, temperatures hit 39C, though the humidity made it feel hotter, Zaino says. A red-alert weather warning was issued. Palm trees toppled from water loss.

Living in Madrid for 16 years, Zaino is used to heat. "We live in certain ways, where you close the shutters midday, you stay inside and you take a siesta. But this summer was like nothing I've ever experienced," Zaino said. "You can't sleep at night. Midday, it's unbearable – you can't be outside. So until 16:00 or 17:00, you can't leave the house.

"It didn't feel like a vacation, in a way. It felt like we were just trapped."

While climate events like Spain's July heatwave have multiple causes, research regularly finds that they are many times more likely, and more intense, due to the human burning of fossil fuels. But they haven't been the only consequence of human-induced carbon emissions in the Mediterranean this summer.

In July 2023, wildfires in Greece burned more than 54,000 hectares, almost five times more than the annual average, leading to the largest wildfire evacuations the country ever has initiated. Through August, other wildfires ripped across parts of Tenerife and Girona, Spain; Sarzedas, Portugal; and the Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily, to name a few. Other worrying signs of rising temperatures seemed to be everywhere in Europe: drought in Portugal, thousands of jellyfish on French Riviera beaches, even a rise in mosquito-borne infections like dengue thanks to warmer temperatures and flooding resulting in less insect die-off.

While the changing climate will affect various regions differently, and although no part of the Earth is immune, scientists agree that southern Europe is seeing – and will continue to see – more heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, coastal floods and stronger wind storms, as well as periods of more intense rainfall. Much of that is falling during summer, the Mediterranean's most popular tourist season.

These events aren't just inconvenient or uncomfortable. They can be deadly. In Spain, nearly 1,000 people died in eight