With persistent heat waves becoming more common across the Northern Hemisphere, triggering unprecedented forest fires and negative effects on people's health, a Turkish climatologist asserted Friday that they should be considered natural disasters, just like floods.

Professor Levent Kurnaz, director of Boğaziçi University's Center for Climate Change and Policy Studies, speaking to local media, called for urgent action, emphasizing that the climate fingerprints driven by coal and petroleum emissions would lead to the continuation of the warming.

"These are still relatively better times, and authorities need to urgently acknowledge heat waves as disasters," he said, stressing that the next 20 years are bound to be even worse.

From the beginning of the month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued multiple warnings about extreme heat waves, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere and worldwide.

July has been so hot thus far that scientists calculate that this month will be the hottest globally on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen, even though there are several days left to sweat through.

The WMO and the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July's heat is beyond record-smashing. They said Earth's temperature has been temporarily passing over a key warming threshold: The internationally accepted goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

As a new heat wave threatens to impact Türkiye again, Kurnaz listed the measures needed to prevent further temperature increases to address the climate crisis.

He also recalled that Istanbul has recorded the highest temperatures in 23 years, with 44.1 degrees Celsius on July 26, noting that this figure could likely touch even 45 next summer.

"We also experience cold waves from the Balkans, not only in January but also in July. Cold waves from the Balkans occur every season. A temperature drop of 10 degrees from one day to the next is not something we haven't seen or heard before. We are not so surprised when it happens at other times, but when temperatures suddenly drop from 40 to 20 degrees, we wonder what is happening," Kurnaz noted.

Elaborating on the recent heat wave experienced across the nation in the past couple of days, Kurnaz said that high temperatures do indicate a climate crisis. Yet, he noted the situation is a bit milder in Türkiye, where having only one day of extreme heat is not too bad when compared to, for example, some parts of America where it lasts for five days, 20 days, one month, or even one and a half months.

"Compared to them, our heat wave came and went in a day or two. That's why we are grateful for the cold waves coming from the Balkans," he said.

Reiterating that the warming of the atmosphere leads to an increase in temperatures, he said that according to the laws of the Republic of Türkiye, high temperatures are not considered a disaster. He suggested issuing such laws and pledged to issue of warnings in cases when high temperatures last longer.

"There is no chance of going back to being better in any way. But we can prevent it from getting worse. We need to stop burning coal, petroleum and natural gas. Around 65% of this problem comes from burning coal, petroleum and natural gas," he said, urging to shift on the production of energy from renewable sources.

Considering the recent record-breaking temperatures, he reiterated that the planet's well-being depends on immediate efforts to mitigate global warming.