I mean... the author might just assume that most readers will be aware of recent events in Southern Europe; it doesn't really seem necessary to belabour the point. The curious can look it up fairly easily.

If every news article had to go into full detail on every point that most people know anyway, they'd end up kind of ungainly. "A train is a large motorised vehicle which runs, generally on a regular schedule, on steel tracks. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. An alloy is..."

Beyond people who actually still deny climate change (they're still out there, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the developed world they're concentrated in the US, Canada, and Australia, all big fossil fuel producers... "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"), I don't think many people would argue that it's not a _fairly significant issue_ for Southern Europe.

A couple of week ago the south part of the country was dealing with near record high temperatures, while the north was dealing with floods.

This spring/summer we’re experiencing floods, frequent and intense thunderstorms, and extreme heat. All together, depending on the day and the region. Last year we suffered an absurd drought.