Melting icebergs at the poles, lethally hot temperatures at the equator, flooding pacific islands: these are the places that come to mind when many of us think of global warming. In reality, destruction is at our doorstep, and the environmental damage that Europe is responsible for is catching up with us. The effects of a warming earth are becoming harder to ignore in Europe as this winter was hotter than ever, with avalanches and floods permeating the winter.
Besides the arctic poles, Europe is the fastest warming region in the world with the top 10 fastest warming countries all being within Europe. The global average of warming for the earth has been about 0.26°C per decade, but in Europe the rate of warming is an additional 0.53°C per decade. More than double the global average. According to the UN, the 10 countries presently most impacted by global warming are all in Europe, with the Norwegian island of Svalbard leading the trend. This of, course, excludes the arctic poles, which are not countries.
In September 2025, ‘Storm Boris’ was an event of major flooding, wracking central European countries such as Italy, Poland, Germany and Romania. This major flooding, killing 24 people, consisted of unprecedented precipitation levels. Such extreme, violent weather had rarely been seen before on the ‘old continent’. Europe has never been faced with such challenges, and innovative solutions will be needed to suit these novel hardships.
As winter ends, new data shows that almost every single European country experienced hotter seasonal temperatures than usual.
In the Alps, avalanche patterns are drastically changing due to this rapid warming. This winter, Switzerland recorded over 119 fatalities (as of February 2026) because to these ‘not-so-natural’ disasters, unnatural due to the human-caused warming which increases their occurrence. Paradoxically, despite the decreasing snow volume the likelihood of dangerous wet snow avalanches will increase the long-term prospective of avalanche occurrence.
Generally, the Alps are one of the regions with the fastest warming, causing alpine glaciers to melt at a staggering rate.
But what causes this considerable disparity between regions?
Many biological, social and geographic factors explain this trend. For instance, countries closer to the oceans are less affected because the ocean has a heat-absorption capacity that is higher than land’s. The fact that Europe has many land-locked countries, such as Switzerland, certainly does not help.
More importantly, European countries are smaller and closer to the pole, a region where warming is amplified. While countries like Canada and Russia are at similar latitudes, they are much larger; the temperature trends across the country average out, resulting in lower average country increases.
The earth warming is a fundamental truth, but to combat this terrifyingly dystopian prospect amongst all the other atrocities of the world we live in, we must retain one crucial thing: optimism. It is our responsibility to take action, not only for the future generations, but for the billions of brilliant, beautiful living things that still exist, and are waiting to be saved.
Voting for green parties, raising awareness, advocating for greener legislation, these are all actions we can take to protect our planet, and the living things we share it with.
Image by Isabella Daniels for The Student