A team of international scientists sets sail Thursday from Britain for Greenland to study its rapidly melting ice using drones, mini-submarines and autonomous swimming robots.

France is experiencing a "very worrying" drought that has spurred a record number of water restrictions for the time of year, the ecology minister said on Wednesday.

Deaths in Germany spiked 32 percent during a record heatwave in June compared to levels in the previous four years, official data showed Tuesday.

Hundreds of French firefighters aided by water bombers on Tuesday battled to control wildfires that have ravaged a hugely popular forest outside Paris as another scorching heatwave keeps the capital in its grip.

A fire raging in the historic and much-visited Fontainebleau forest south of Paris on Monday prompted evacuations of some residential neighborhoods and disrupted train and highway traffic.

It was among several wildfires in western Europe as the region bakes under its third red-alert heat wave this year.

A wildfire killed 12 people in southern Spain as soaring temperatures gripped much of the country, Spanish authorities said early Friday.

Several victims of the fire in Los Gallardos were found inside burnt-out vehicles, local media reported. Six others have been injured in the blaze, which 150 firefighters were battling.

The morning sun beats down on Antonio Reina as he tends to a public garden in Barcelona, but he works reassured that a simple wristband protects him in the summer heat.

The device contains a sensor that detects body temperature. If Reina gets dangerously hot at the risk of making a potentially deadly heatstroke likelier, a red light and a sound raise the alarm.

A landslide in China's northwestern Gansu province killed five people on Tuesday, with rescuers working to locate 12 others still missing, state media reported.

At least 33 people were initially reported missing after the landslide in a village near Gansu's Longnan city, state news agency Xinhua said.

A large wildfire in the south of France prompted Tour de France organizers to ban fans from attending the finale of the third stage of cycling's showpiece race on Monday.

After a couple of days in Spain, the race enters France with a stage to the Pyrenees town of Les Angles, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from a fire that has burned large swathes of land.

Deaths surged by nearly a third in France during the hottest week of a record heat wave last month, the country's public health authority said Friday, reporting at least 2,000 more deaths than in the previous week when temperatures were already climbing and filling emergency wards with heat victims.

The new and still incomplete figures from Public Health France doubled its first preliminary estimate of at least 1,000 additional deaths that it gave last Sunday. That earlier estimate covered just three of the hottest days of extreme, deadly heat.