Sizzling summer a foretaste of the future for Southern Europe

ROME - Swathes of southern Europe sweltered Saturday in a heat wave that has claimed several lives, cost billions in crop damage and is, scientists warned, a foretaste of worse to follow in coming decades.

At least five deaths in Italy and Romania have been attributed to the extreme conditions since the heatwave set in around the start of August.

Unusually high, sometimes unprecedented temperatures, are being recorded across an area spanning much of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal), southern France, Italy, the Balkans and Hungary.