The World Bakes Under Extreme Heat

Deadly heat waves are upending daily life in large parts of the U.S., Europe and Asia, as warming oceans and unprecedented humidity fuel one of Earth’s hottest summers on record.

Meteorologists say last month was the hottest June on record and 2023 could be the hottest year ever if July’s record temperatures continue, straining businesses and threatening power grids.

Several factors are contributing to the record heat this summer, said Brett Anderson, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather. Among them: Unusually warm oceans are raising humidity levels; several heat domes are trapping warmth around the world for longer than usual; and jet streams are causing deadly storms like the ones in Vermont this month to move slowly.

The hot seas and a recurring warm climate pattern called El Niño are compounding the effects of climate change, which scientists say is contributing to higher global temperatures.

“We are seeing an increasing number and more extremes and this is because of global warming,” said Jose Alvaro Mendes Pimpao Alves Silva, a consulting climatologist for the World Meteorological Organization, referring to extreme heat waves. “These situations are not unprecedented. But as they happen, their intensity is higher.”

Climate change has exacerbated extreme heat events, which have increased sixfold since the 1980s, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Increasing surface temperatures from climate warming make heat waves longer, more intense, and produce the weather conditions that keep them stalled over one place.

Global ocean temperatures hit record highs for the third consecutive month after El Niño conditions strengthened in June, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

High-pressure heat domes that bring sweltering temperatures have occurred during the past few summers, but having four of them over land at the same time is still surprising to Carl Schreck, a tropical climatologist at North Carolina State University who works with NOAA.

“We’ve seen this over the last couple of summers, but it’s still remarkable when it does appear,” said Schreck.

Still, the sustained heat waves haven’t stopped tourists from hitting the beach in Spain or visiting landmarks in Washington, D.C. Some have even basked in the heat in California’s Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth.

U.S.

Several cities, including Phoenix, have broken records as the southern U.S. deals with unrelenting heat. El Paso, Texas, logged a record 33rd day in a row Tuesday with triple-digit temperatures. Texas’ power grids have held up despite concerns they couldn’t handle demand surges.

In the North, parts of Michigan, New York and Vermont have also broken daily temperature records this summer.

The waters off Florida in recent weeks have been hotter than 90 degrees, several degrees above normal, according to NOAA. The temperatures are threatening the coral reefs off the coast and fueling heat and humidity in the southern part of the state.

Europe

Europe is baking under a sustained heat wave that is covering much of the Mediterranean, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The Spanish state meteorological service warned of temperatures of between 108 and 111 degrees and issued alerts for the interior and Balearic Islands. Parts of the Balkans are also under alert.

The Italian island of Sardinia was forecast to approach an all-time high for the continent on Tuesday. Sicily set the highest recorded temperature in Europe at 119.8 degrees Fahrenheit, in August 2021.

Alberto Urpi, the mayor of Sanluri in Sardinia, said authorities had issued a weather red alert for the area, advising people to stay inside from late morning until 6 p.m.

“We are ready,” said Urpi. “We’ve gotten used to these heat waves and have had time to organise our response.”

Authorities closed the Acropolis in Athens for a large part of Friday and Saturday due to the heat. The Greek capital is forecast to stay above 97 degrees all week, topping out at almost 110 on Sunday.

Middle East

As temperatures soar to about 100 degrees across Egypt, the government has been cutting power in neighbourhoods across the country, forcing ordinary Egyptians to go without air conditioning, fans and refrigeration even during the hottest hours of the day.

“We are having horrible nights. Babies are crying because of the high temperatures and our refrigerator broke down,” said Nemaa Moustafa, a 31-year-old homemaker with newly born twins.

Egypt is in the midst of an economic crisis that has officials scrambling to bring in foreign currency to pay off staggering debts and stave off a currency collapse. Diverting the country’s natural-gas resources away from domestic use and toward lucrative exports is one way to get U.S. dollars.

In El-Shorouk city, on the outskirts of greater Cairo, residents said power cuts were happening four or five times a day, leaving them without electricity for hours. Some said they were also experiencing water disruptions making it more difficult to cope with the heat. Many stores and supermarkets have struggled to keep food fresh as refrigerators go down amid the cuts.

Asia

Another heat wave is simultaneously sweeping across parts of Asia. In China, a village in the northwestern region of Xinjiang hit a record high 126 degrees, according to state media.

During the heat wave, the U.S. climate envoy John Kerry met Chinese officials including Beijing’s top foreign policy envoy, Wang Yi, and Premier Li Qiang to discuss how to accelerate decarbonisation and other climate change goals. China and the U.S. are the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.

Silva from the World Meteorological Organization said there are currently high-pressure systems trapping hot air in the region. The systems will remain in place over the next several days.

“It’s moving very slowly, but we will not have this situation forever,” Silva said.

—Chao Deng contributed to this article.

On Bastille Day, the scent of toasted bread, melting cheese, crêpes and velouté filled a heritage warehouse in Sydney’s Darlinghurst.

Inside Prim Haus, rooms had been transformed into an elegant interpretation of a contemporary French home. Cookware hung alongside market produce, appliances were placed within carefully composed domestic settings and live kitchens turned out French comfort food throughout the afternoon.

The occasion was La Maison de Tefal, an immersive celebration marking 70 years since a French engineer introduced an invention that would fundamentally change home cooking.

Tefal’s story began in 1956 with the commercial launch of what the company describes as the world’s first non-stick frying pan. Seven decades later, the business operates across cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care in more than 120 countries.

The scale of the modern brand is considerable, but its origins were remarkably domestic.

The invention that started in a French kitchen

In the early 1950s, French engineer Marc Grégoire began experimenting with polytetrafluoroethylene, better known as PTFE, after discovering its unusually effective non-stick properties.

The material was already known within industrial applications. Grégoire’s important contribution was developing a way to bond it securely to an aluminium disc.

According to the company’s history, a conversation with his wife inspired him to apply the process to cookware. The resulting pan allowed meat and eggs to be cooked using less fat, while making the surface considerably easier to clean.

Grégoire patented his non-stick frying-pan concept in 1954 and began selling the finished product in 1956. The new company’s name combined the French words for the two defining materials: Téflon and aluminium.

The attraction was immediate. This was innovation expressed through a simple, recognisable household problem. Food stuck to pans; the new Tefal pan was designed so it would not.

The idea quickly travelled beyond France. Tefal entered the United States in 1961, the same year the company established the production site at Rumilly, near the French Alps. Rumilly would become the centre of Tefal’s cookware expertise and develop an identity as the “frying pan capital of the world”.

The company says more than 35 million cookware items were manufactured at the Rumilly site in 2022. A local museum holds the 500 millionth pan produced by the factory, which came off the line in March 1994.

A Parisian home in the heart of Sydney

La Maison de Tefal translated that industrial history into a more intimate experience.

Held on 14 July, the anniversary used Bastille Day as both a cultural reference and a reminder that Tefal’s identity remains closely connected to French design and engineering.

Prim Haus was arranged as a sequence of domestic environments rather than a conventional product showroom. Guests moved through spaces devoted to cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care, with each collection presented within the rhythm of a modern home.

A French-market-inspired cooking area formed the social centre of the event. Live stations served croque-monsieur, crêpes and butternut velouté, demonstrating the products through food rather than static displays.

That distinction matters. Tefal’s most successful products have generally been those whose benefit can be understood almost immediately: a pan that releases food, a removable handle that saves cupboard space, an indicator showing when cookware has reached the correct temperature, or an appliance that automates part of a familiar cooking process.

Interactive demonstrations allowed guests to handle the products and see those functions in context. Heritage installations traced the brand’s development, while previews of newer releases connected its first frying pan with the much broader contemporary range.

The anniversary concluded with a champagne toast — an appropriately French punctuation mark for a company whose products have found their way into kitchens around the world.

Seventy years of practical invention

The non-stick frying pan established the operating principle Tefal continues to follow: find an everyday source of friction and develop a practical way to reduce it.

In 1996, the company introduced Ingenio, a modular cookware system built around removable handles. Pans could be stacked more efficiently and moved from cooktop to oven, table and refrigerator without the fixed handle of conventional cookware.

The concept anticipated the pressures that would reshape urban kitchens. As apartments became more compact and storage more valuable, cookware needed to occupy less room and serve more than one function.

Around the beginning of the following decade, Tefal introduced its heat-indicator technology, now known as Thermo-Signal. The circular marker changes appearance when the pan reaches its recommended cooking temperature, turning a technical question into a visual prompt.

In 2006, Tefal expanded the possibilities of countertop cooking with ActiFry. The appliance circulated hot air around food and used little or no added oil, helping establish a product category that would eventually become one of the most competitive areas of the global appliance market.

Innovation also moved beyond cooking. The Freemove cordless steam iron arrived in 2012, removing the cord from the active ironing movement while retaining a powered base.

The company’s current portfolio now extends across multicookers, grills, air fryers, blenders, ice-cream makers, garment steamers, irons and floor-care products. Although the categories are diverse, the common proposition remains convenience grounded in engineering.

The next generation of non-stick cookware

For its 70th year, Tefal has returned to the product that created the brand.

The new Excellence+ cookware range introduces what the company calls FusionCore technology. Tefal describes it as its most durable non-stick coating to date, designed to withstand intensive use and scratching.

As with any durability claim, consumers should follow the manufacturer’s care instructions and consider the applicable warranty rather than interpreting promotional language as a guarantee against every form of damage. But the focus on longer-lasting coatings reflects an important change in buyer expectations.

Convenience is no longer enough on its own. Modern households are increasingly concerned with how long products remain useful, whether they can be repaired and what happens when they reach the end of their working life.

Tefal has responded in several ways. Its Renew cookware uses recycled aluminium and a ceramic non-stick coating, while Groupe SEB has expanded cookware recycling initiatives in international markets. For many small domestic appliances, the group also promotes a 15-year repairability commitment based on parts availability and access to authorised repairers.

The details and warranty periods vary by product and country, so Australian buyers should check the conditions attached to an individual appliance. Nevertheless, repairability represents a meaningful shift from the assumption that a failed countertop appliance should simply be discarded.

From French manufacturer to global household group

Tefal joined Groupe SEB in 1968, giving the company greater international distribution and the resources to expand beyond cookware.

Founded in 1857 and headquartered in France, Groupe SEB has grown into a global small-appliance and cookware business with more than 30 brands. Its portfolio includes All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Lagostina and WMF, with operations extending across more than 150 countries.

Within that group, Tefal remains one of the flagship names — and one of the clearest examples of how a single invention can become the foundation for an international consumer brand.

Its longevity has not come from making everyday objects more complicated. The strongest Tefal products do the opposite. They take a small uncertainty, inconvenience or frustration and design it out of the task.

That was the value of Marc Grégoire’s original frying pan. It did not ask people to change what they cooked. It made the existing process easier, more predictable and less difficult to clean afterwards.

Seventy years later, that deceptively modest principle continues to guide the company.

La Maison de Tefal celebrated the products, the French heritage and the anniversary itself. Yet the larger story was visible at every cooking station and demonstration: innovation becomes lasting only when people can use it without having to think about the technology underneath.

For Tefal, the next 70 years will be shaped by new materials, smarter appliances, changing homes and greater expectations around durability. Its challenge will be to keep evolving without losing sight of the insight that started everything — that the most valuable household inventions often solve the most ordinary problems.

Tefal at a glance

Founded: France, 1956
Founder: Engineer Marc Grégoire
Original innovation: Commercialisation of the first non-stick frying pan
Manufacturing heritage: Rumilly, France
Notable innovations: Ingenio, Thermo-Signal, ActiFry and Freemove
Latest cookware development: Excellence+ with FusionCore technology
Parent company: Groupe SEB
International presence: More than 120 countries
Australian website: Tefal Australia