During the June heat wave that brought record temperatures to western Europe, around 65% of adults in the UK struggled to sleep, according to a recent poll. Near half of those lost three or more hours sleep a night.
Sleep disruption is an inevitable consequence of longer and hotter summers fueled by human-made climate change. As the fastest-warming continent that is heating at more than double the global average, Europe is a sleep loss hot spot.
In the German state of Saxony in June, a weather station reported a tropical overnight minimum temperature of 29.4 degrees Celsius (85 degrees Fahrenheit).
Such overnight extremes are now 100 times more likely due to climate change caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, notes World Weather Attribution, a global scientific body analyzing how climate drives weather extremes.
Climate change disrupts sleep
