In 2003 I was in the UK just as Europe was going through the hottest summer in Europe since 1540.
It was literally like a furnace. Not only did it get about as hot as it can in the hotter parts of the USA, but because much of Europe isn’t used to that kind of heat during summer, they usually don’t have air-conditioning, or any HVAC systems to speak about. They usually just had radiators for winter heating. I can definitely say no home or building in Britain seemed to have air conditioners. So there was nowhere to go for any relief. Meanwhile the British people, who were not at all used to such heat, were dying. Literally. All over the news in England were stories of older people dying in their houses from the heat: literally, lack of A/C. Meanwhile, the same thing was happening all over Europe that summer. The UK news would also have stories about France, Germany and the Netherlands. They also were countries that had never gotten hot enough to ever need air-conditioning before, and the elderly were dying in record numbers in these and other countries too.I can’t imagine the new business that HVAC businesses, HVAC technicians, air-conditioner services, and so on in that part of the world received after that summer. Apparently there have been a few more similar heat-waves since, although none as extreme as 2003. It seems hard to believe many of those countries had never needed widespread cooling systems before.