Fireworks in a T-shirt instead of a winter jacket: that was the reality in many European cities on New Year’s Eve. At the turn of the year, at least eight EU countries recorded temperature records. Including Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia. The warmest January day ever was recorded in all of them, explained the climatologist Maximiliano Herrera to the British “Guardian”.
In Korbielów, Poland, the thermometer rose to 19 degrees Celsius – a temperature that would be normal for the Silesian village in May and 18 degrees above the annual average for January. In Javorník in the Czech Republic, the temperature rose to 19.6 degrees, the average is 3 degrees at this time of the year.
But not only in comparatively cold countries did the temperature records keep falling. In Germany alone, almost 950 records were recorded by local measuring stations between December 31 and January 2, according to Herrera. In Wielenbach in the Upper Bavarian district of Weilheim-Schongau, 20.8 degrees were measured around 2 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, and 20 degrees in Munich. This is reported by “tagesschau.de” with reference to the German Weather Service.
Beach weather prevailed in northern Spain and southern France: The hottest January day to date was also measured in Bilbao at 24.9 degrees Celsius. Records were also set at stations in Cantabria, Asturias and the Basque Country.
“We can consider this the most extreme event in European history,” Herrera said. The climatologist compared the record temperatures with last summer. However, in this case, the extent of the heat spread to a much larger area – about 15 countries.
“We can probably say that this is the first time that an extreme weather event in Europe has been comparable to those in North America in terms of extreme heat,” Herrera concludes.
The reason for the record temperatures was a warm air mass that developed off the west coast of Africa, moving northeast across Europe from Portugal and Spain, in the wake of a high pressure area over the Mediterranean, according to meteorologist Alex Burkill.
Meteorologist Scott Duncan said temperatures across Europe were staggering. “Last year we had a very warm New Year’s Eve, but this year tops it all,” he said. “We have observed that in several countries long-standing records have been broken by a wide margin.”
Bill McGuire, Professor of Geophysics and Climate Hazards, said that the high temperatures are a portent of worse to come: “The most worrying thing about this development is that, at the rate of global warming, it just doesn’t come as a surprise anymore.” It is a small foretaste of a future in which winter will be reduced to a few months with dreary, damp and mild weather and in which there will be hardly any frost, ice or snow.
Sources: The Guardian, tagesschau.de, DWD
