Europe wilts under early heat wave from Med to North Sea

A child plays in a fountain in the warm weather in London, Friday, June 17, 2022. A blanket of hot air stretching from the Mediterranean to the North Sea is giving much of western Europe its first heat wave of the summer, with temperatures forecast to top 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) from Malaga to London on Friday. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)

BERLIN — A blanket of hot air stretching from the Mediterranean to the North Sea is bringing much of Western Europe its first heat wave of the summer, with temperatures Friday exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) from London to Paris.

Meteorologists say the unusually early heat wave is a sign of what's to come as global warming continues, moving up in the calendar the temperatures that Europe would previously have seen only in July and August.