The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Here is a new feature for this blog, which I will add daily. This is the latest inciteful Green News Report from my friends Desi Doyen and Brad Friedman at Progressive Voices. Hit ‘continue reading,’ listen, then hit return to see my daily topics:
Topic: Europe Should Look to Africa for Heatwave Solutions
Dear Diary. Europe continues to struggle through a summer of climate crisis related heat. At its peak over 20,000 souls perished from a heatwave that I dubbed Ember (for a dragon) in June. Since then, there has been some relief in spots, but there are signs of another major event coming closer to August with the worst conditions pegged for Italy.
Many households are trying to install air conditioning as soon as possible to beat the heat. City planners are looking at installing more green spaces and eliminating traffic congestion, which adds to heat islands. African nations have contended with extreme heat for decades without having to install fairly expensive air conditioning. As European authorities struggle to plan for adaptation, perhaps they should look to Africa for solutions.
Here are more details from Al Jazeera:
Europe should look to Africa for heatwave solutions | Climate Crisis | Al Jazeera
Europe should look to Africa for heatwave solutions
African communities have spent decades developing practical, tested ways to live with extreme heat.
By Wole Hammond and Ellen Davies
Published On 18 Jul 2026
A student studies under a tree in Freetown, Sierra Leone on November 20, 2012 [File: Joe Penney/Reuters]
As Europe faces repeated, dangerous heatwaves, the question is no longer whether rich countries need climate adaptation. It is whether they are willing to learn from places that have been adapting to climate instability for decades.
Across the continent, record temperatures are straining hospitals, disrupting transport and turning ordinary public spaces into health risks. In the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the Balkans, extreme heat is only now becoming part of the social, economic and political reality of climate change.
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But in Africa, communities have lived with rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought, water stress and fragile public infrastructure for generations. They have had to adapt under constrained conditions, often without the financing, insurance coverage or recovery systems available to wealthier countries. The continent has developed behavioural, architectural, technological and institutional approaches that offer real lessons for a rapidly warming Europe.
That is not to suggest there are silver bullets. Climate adaptation is never a matter of simple transplantation: A solution designed for Ouagadougou will need to be reshaped, tested and adjusted before it works in Marseille or Madrid. Local geography, building codes, culture and governance all matter. But the underlying approaches and the expertise behind them travel further than is often assumed.
Take architecture. Across West Africa, architects such as Francis Kere have pioneered climate-smart building design rooted in Indigenous techniques: Reflective roofing, thick walls built from local materials, and window and ventilation systems that cool buildings passively, without heavy reliance on mechanical air conditioning. As European cities confront ageing housing stock ill-suited to sustained heat, and energy grids strained by air-conditioning demand, these low-tech, low-energy design principles deserve serious attention.
Cities, too, have innovated. Sierra Leone’s capital has led on urban greening through its “Freetown the Tree Town” initiative, a large-scale tree-planting programme designed specifically to tackle the urban heat island effect that makes cities significantly hotter than surrounding areas. The initiative is funded through the carbon credit market.
European cities, many of them dense, paved and short on green cover, face precisely this problem. Freetown’s experience, including how it has organised, financed and sustained mass tree-planting at city scale, is directly relevant.
Across Africa, community health responses have shown how heat adaptation programmes can be built to reach the most vulnerable, working through primary health centres and public health officers to address extreme heat risks in informal settlements, where residents often have the least protection and the fewest resources to cope. Burkina Faso, for example, operates a national heatwave alert system that goes beyond weather warnings, actively promoting hydration and helping people manage exposure during peak heat hours, backed by door-to-door check-ins on vulnerable residents.
Europe’s own most exposed populations: Older people living alone, outdoor workers, and residents of poorly insulated housing, would benefit from health systems organised around the same principle: Proactive, targeted, community-embedded care rather than generic public advisories.
These climate adaptation initiatives are grounded in local geography, governance and community structures. But the principle applies broadly: Heat resilience works best when it creates local ownership, local jobs and visible public value.
The larger point is that adaptation should be seen not as charity or crisis response, but as innovation.
Had adaptation finance been treated as a central pillar of climate action rather than a secondary concern, many of these solutions would already be better funded, better documented and better positioned for wider learning. Instead, the global system has repeatedly paid for emergencies while underinvesting in the systems that reduce risk before disaster strikes.
Europe’s heatwaves show that underinvestment in adaptation anywhere weakens the world’s collective ability to respond everywhere. The more African cities, researchers, public health institutions and community organisations are supported to test and scale solutions, the more knowledge the world can draw from.
North-South cooperation must become a two-way street. Europe should continue to share climate science, technology and finance. But it should also listen to and learn from African adaptation practice. Municipalities should be exchanging notes with other municipalities. Public health officials should be learning from each other across continents. Architects, planners and engineers should be studying what works in hot, resource-constrained environments, not as curiosities, but as sources of design intelligence.
We are entering a period in which extreme heat will test the basic functioning of societies. It will test schools, hospitals, transport systems, housing, labour laws, food systems and public trust. No region has all the answers. But some regions have been forced to confront the questions for longer.
Africa’s experience with heat and climate stress is often told as a story of vulnerability. That story is true, but incomplete. It is also a story of invention, adaptation and expertise. As Europe searches for ways to live with a hotter future, it should not look only inward or upward to new technologies. It should also look south, to communities, cities and institutions that have been learning how to adapt in real time.
What is needed now is the humility to look for solutions where they have already been built, and the collaboration to put them to work wherever they are needed next.
The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
- Wole Hammond Wole Hammond is the Programme Officer for Adaptation and Resilience at the African Climate Foundation based in Nigeria.
- Ellen Davies Ellen Davies is the Head of Programmes at the African Climate Foundation and is based in Kenya.
Related:
- From: Talk to Al Jazeera Mina Hasman on designing cities for a hotter future Climate advocate Mina Hasman’s vision of designing cities that behave like forests and buildings that act like trees. Published On 19 Jul 2026
- Iranians suffer from power blackouts during war and heatwave Collapsing grid, battered by military strikes and chronic underinvestment, leaves Iranians sweltering in the dark. Published On 19 Jul 2026
![Pitch-black corridors and unlit facilities have become a daily reality as rolling blackouts plunge civilian infrastructure into darkness. [Rasol Alhaei/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/iran-5-1784396890-1784440360.webp?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
- World Cup final: All to know about Canadian wildfire smoke, NY weather A thunderstorm rolled through the region causing disruption, and a haze raised air quality concerns in New York City. Published On 18 Jul 2026
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the U.S. the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Wednesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)