Europe breaks temperature records and reaches summer records in the middle of winter

Hundreds of weather stations across Europe recorded the highest daily temperature reached during the months of December or January. Several national meteorological and hydrological services from the old continent confirm that the year 2022 was the warmest in history in their respective countries.

High temperatures ravage Europe in the dead of winter and break all kinds of records ever seen, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently reported.

The UN agency highlighted that temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius occurred in many countries of the old continent, even in Central Europe and that, in several nations, from Spain to several in Eastern Europe, some national temperature records were broken. and many venues during the months of December and January.

Hundreds of weather stations across Europe recorded the highest daily temperature reached during those two months. As an example, on December 31 the thermometer reached a maximum record of 25.1 degrees Celsius in the Spanish city of Bilbao, exceeding 24.4 degrees Celsius on January 1, 2022.

Other outstanding examples of high temperatures during the last day of 2022 were the 18.9 degrees Celsius reached in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, which exceeded the 13.8 degrees Celsius of January 1993; or the 19.4 degrees Celsius recorded in the German city of Dresden, which pulverized the all-time high of 17.7 degrees Celsius on December 5, 1961.

An area of ​​high pressure over the Mediterranean basin and an Atlantic system of low pressure caused a strong southwesterly flow that brought warm air from northwest Africa to the mid-latitudes. In the eastern North Atlantic, the sea surface temperature was between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius higher than normal, and near the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula this increase was greater.

The publication of these high records coincided with the confirmation of several European national meteorological and hydrological services -such as AEMET (Spain), Meteo France (France), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany) and Met Office (United Kingdom)- that the year 2022 was the warmest in history in their respective countries.

Winter temperatures in many parts of Europe have been abnormally high. (Photo: Amazings/NCYT)

Recent WMO data related to Europe

The frequency and intensity of extreme heat events, including marine heat waves, have increased in recent decades and are projected to continue to increase regardless of the greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

Critical thresholds for ecosystems and humans are expected to be exceeded by the end of the century with global warming of 2 degrees Celsius or more than pre-industrial levels. The Paris Agreement sets the goal of limiting that increase to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The WMO published the Report on the State of the Climate in Europe 2021 two months ago, where it was reported on the significant increase in temperatures in Europe during the period 1991-2021, at an average rate of approximately +0.5 degrees Celsius per decade. , the highest of all the continents of the world and a growth superior to the double of the world average.

Despite La Niña conditions keeping global temperatures down for the second year in a row, 2022 is likely to remain the fifth or sixth warmest year on record globally. (Font: UN News)