Why is Europe the fastest-warming continent?
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The latest European State of the Climate report has found that Europe is once again getting warmer, and at a rate that is twice as fast as the global average. Tom Whipple is joined by Dr Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, to understand the driving forces behind this stark difference and anticipate what Europeans can expect in the coming years as a result.
We also remember Dr J Craig Venter, one of the famous founders of what we might now call the genomic age of science who dies this week.
In the lead-up to the 100th birthday of the world-famous broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, Inside Science is shining a spotlight on a species of scientific importance that has been named after him. This week, Dr Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou shares his treacherous search for a unique species of echidna previously thought to be extinct.
Plus, science journalist Caroline Steel fills us in on the latest science news that you might have missed - from the surprising growth rates of Neanderthal babies to 10,000 newly discovered planets.
Presenter: Tom Whipple Producer: Alex Mansfield Assistant Producer: Katie Tomsett Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Your time starts now. |
| 0:07.2 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:09.4 | Absolutely right. |
| 0:11.5 | So, you might like to know that the BBC makes loads of other podcasts. |
| 0:15.6 | Really? |
| 0:16.4 | Wow. |
| 0:17.2 | Many of them are very funny. |
| 0:19.1 | Which I think means... |
| 0:20.3 | A hatful of ha-hars. And energy. Even if we do very funny. Which I think means... A hatful of ha haas. |
| 0:21.7 | And energy. Even if you do say so ourselves. I agree 100% to that. Find them all on BBC Sounds. Just tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Tell us a joke. Come on, tell us a joke. Just search comedy on BBC Sounds. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in. Hello, I'm Tom Whipple and welcome to Inside Science from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:41.9 | In this week's show, we'll be remembering one of the founders of the genomics era. |
| 0:46.4 | We'll be looking at further disruption to academia in the US. |
| 0:50.2 | And afterwards, Caroline Steele has scoured some of the journals published this week to find the best research stories. |
| 0:59.2 | But before all that, there's something up with Europe's climate. |
| 1:03.3 | And yes, there's something up with it even compared to the things that are up with other continents' climates. |
| 1:10.0 | In the Arctic Circle, they saw temperatures of 30 Celsius. |
| 1:14.3 | In Vestfold, in definitively non-tropical Norway, |
| 1:17.8 | there were ten consecutive tropical nights, |
| 1:20.7 | nights when the temperature never fell below 20 Celsius. |
| 1:24.0 | In Greenland, the year's ice loss comfortably exceeded the volume of all the glaciers left in the Alps. |
| 1:31.3 | In March, 1.3 million square kilometres less European land was under snow than normal, |
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