Europe is the continent warming fastest in the world. The number is brutal: 2.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels - twice the global average of 1.4 degrees. In some regions - eastern and south-eastern Europe, the Alps - temperatures are rising by 0.5 to 1 degree per decade. On Svalbard, the most extreme case, that is 1.5 to 2 degrees per decade.

There are three reasons, and they are all connected. First: Arctic ice melting. The dark surfaces of ocean and ground exposed beneath melting ice absorb far more solar energy than reflective ice does. That creates a self-reinforcing warming cycle - known as the "albedo effect". The Arctic has already warmed by 3.2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The second reason, paradoxically: fewer aerosols. Since the 1980s, Europe's stricter environmental rules have significantly reduced industrial particulate emissions in the air - good news for people's health and for the air quality of cities. But those same particles used to reflect solar energy back. Fewer aerosols = more sun reaching the ground. Clean air, warmer planet.

Third: the heat dome - a barometric formation of high atmospheric pressure that traps warm North African air over western Europe and blocks colder Atlantic systems. That is why summer heat periods are now more intense and longer than they were 20 years ago.

The consequences are already visible. Last year at least seven people died of heatstroke during a ten-kilometre race in Paris. The UK hit 34.8 degrees, France 36, Portugal 40. The last 11 consecutive years are the hottest ever measured. The Balkans? There is no reason to be spared. Macedonian summers above 40 degrees, with nights above 25, are the new normal, not the extreme.

What comes next? According to Ben Clarke at Imperial College London: "As the ice melts, heat absorption intensifies, which further warms the waters." Translation for the ordinary reader: this is not stopping, it is accelerating. Every political conversation about climate policy is happening inside a frame that reality is already breaking. And that is not "alarmism" - that is what the thermometer is showing.