How Climate Change Is Disrupting Summer Travel

It was a summer defined by climate disasters.In May, travelers expecting mild shoulder-season weather across Western and Central Europe were instead greeted by scorching heat topping 95 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of France, Spain, Switzerland and Britain.In Paris, operators canceled daytime walking tours, and attractions like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower restricted their hours.A second heat wave struck two weeks later.

The extreme temperatures strained infrastructure and triggered storms, grounding flights and suspending rail services across France, Britain and Germany.At least 40 people drowned while trying to cool off in France’s canals, and in one scorching week in June, around 16,000 more people died than usual.

As the heat spread across Eastern and Southern Europe through July, wildfires ravaged the continent.Heat records were also shattered across North America in July, fueling hundreds of blazes in Canada.Smoke from those fires engulfed the Midwest and Northeast United States, creating orange skies and hazardous air in cities including Chicago, Detroit and New York.Once dismissed as occasional inconveniences, climate-related disruptions are now an inescapable fixture of summer travel, leaving vacations increasingly unpredictable and dangerous.

For many people, the act of traveling has transformed the concept of “climate change” from an abstraction into something very real.“Climate change is becoming something travelers personally experience rather than something they read about,” said Jenny Southan, the founder of Globetrender, a travel trend-forecasting agency.“The hotel room that is too hot to sleep in, the hiking trail closed because of wildfire risk, the lake affected by drought, or the afternoon sightseeing that becomes exhausting or potentially unsafe in extreme heat.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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