More heat ahead for Europe

Germany's polar bears are keeping to the water

European forecasters have warned of continuing Sahara-like heat until at least the middle of the month.

At least 36 deaths in EU states have been blamed on the soaring temperatures over the past two weeks.

Forest fires continue to burn in Portugal and France, and Germany has reportedly recorded its highest temperature in over a century.

Paris department stores reported a run on portable electric fans as people desperately sought refuge from the scorching weather.

"We have absolutely nothing left, and we have no idea when we'll get a new stock in," a spokeswoman for one chain store told AP news agency.

"The suppliers weren't really able to anticipate the demand caused by the heat wave."

One of the city's tourist attractions, the Catacombs, has been turning away visitors - such is the demand for the chill inside.

"Some people are dragging out their visits so much that we've had trouble getting them to leave when we close," employee Jean-Michel Sommereau told AFP news agency.

Germany sizzles

Weather forecasters predict the high temperatures - which put Paris almost on a par with Mecca in Saudi Arabia - will continue into next week.

Europe's scorching summer

In pictures

Dominique Escale, meteorologist for France's national weather service Meteo France, saw the abnormal heat continuing until at least 15 August.

In Italy, the state-funded CNR research centre said the weather conditions would probably continue into September and described the heat wave as one of the five worst in 150 years.

German TV reported on Friday a temperature of 40.8C in the western Saarland region - the hottest since records began in 1901.

In other developments:

• The heat has killed thousands of farm animals in western France, with 30,000 young pigs dead in the Loire region alone

• Danube water levels have fallen so low in the Balkans that Second World War shipwrecks have been exposed

• Rising water temperatures have forced Germany to close one nuclear power plant and cut output at two others

Portuguese emergency

Wildfires fanned by hot winds have been reported in Spain, Croatia, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy, as well as Portugal and France.

Portugal has deployed 800 troops just back from peacekeeping duties abroad to help battle the fires, which have claimed 15 lives and caused damage worth nearly one billion euros.

The summer blazes have destroyed around 175,000 hectares (430,000 acres) of pinewood and brush across the continent, most of it in Portugal.

"We still have fires burning," Interior Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes said on Friday.

"Unfortunately that number is surely going to increase."

Global warming

The extreme heat is being partly attributed to intense monsoon activity in sub-Saharan Africa which has poured hot desert air over Europe while keeping out cooler Atlantic lows.

The BBC's environment correspondent, Tim Hirsch, says this week's weather fits a global trend which has seen previous records shattered with increasing regularity.

In nine out of the past 12 years, average temperatures worldwide have been higher than at any time since records began in the 19th century and it is very likely that the 1990s were the warmest decade for 1,000 years.

Climate change sceptics say the Earth's weather has always varied over time but, our correspondent notes, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific world is that the biggest single cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

This adds heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere.