TOO MUCH HOT AIR

IT'S PARADISE LOST AS CLIMATE CHANGE REMAKES EUROPE'S SUMMERS

- STORY: JASON HOROWITZ / NYT

Not so long ago, families coming to the shore in Montgat, Spain, just outside Barcelona, built sand castles, played paddle games and lounged around on the broad band of sand that was the picture of the European summer vacation. But now in some places, there is hardly enough room to put down a towel.

"From here to there," said Sofia Mella, 19, as she pointed far out to sea, "it was all sand."

Climate change is changing Europe into a summer paradise lost. Across Spain, Italy, Greece, France and beyond, sand-devouring storms, rising seas, asphyxiating temperatures, deadly floods and horrific wildfires have year after year turned some of the continent's most desired getaways into miserable locales to get away from.

As southern Europeans dream of fjords, the traditional hot spots and fixtures of travel agency package deals no longer seem so desirable. Last week, even though temperatures broke across much of the continent, experts and officials warned that the next heat wave would come soon, endangering vulnerable locals and making tourists question what they had gotten themselves into.

Even activists seeking to free their cities from the scourge of overtourism saw no silver lining to the brutal conditions.

"It's hell," said Daniel Pardo Rivacoba, who lives in Barcelona, and who spoke for a group fighting overtourism — and its climate-change fuelling flights. He saw the scorching Sun not as an ally to keep the tourists away, but as a common enemy that will melt them both.

Last year, Pardo Rivacoba's group went viral by organising demonstrations against overtourism that including spraying tourists with water guns. This year, he said, it was so hot that "we used the water guns on ourselves".

Across the continent, June was the cruellest month. So far. In Rome, tourists rotated around the city's sites as if spinning in an outdoor microwave. Opera singers in Verona passed out in their costumes.