South-east England looked for a time this week like a scene from south-east Australia in the midst of a long, hot summer.

Fires sprang up in parched parks and fields and made their way through the suburbs into London. Drivers battled smoke and flames along motorways on the outskirts. Social media filled with emergency warnings in a manner that Australians know too well.

Britain’s Met Office confirmed that, as temperatures surged on Tuesday, a provisional temperature of 40.2 degrees had been recorded at Heathrow, smashing historical records.

Inside a region that spread across much of France, Germany and Britain, temperatures hovered at nearly 7 degrees above average.

The tumbling temperature records, the fires, the collapsed glaciers, closed schools, buckled train tracks and melted runways have offered us a terrifying glimpse of life in a world that is now 1.1 degrees warmer than it was at the start of the industrial era. The science tells us that no matter how quickly governments act on climate, for most people alive today, this will be the coolest climate they experience.

UK correspondent Enda Brady told Gareth Parker on 6PR Breakfast the heatwave was an “awful experience”.

“Honestly, runways at airports melting, problems with the trains tracks, we had homes catching fire, it’s just absolutely awful,” he said.

“And today Boris Johnson said goodbye, the man who didn’t attend the two crisis meetings about the heatwave. He left parliament today and his last words were ‘hasta la vista baby’.”

Tap PLAY to hear more from Enda Brady on the European heatwave