EUROPEANS, particularly in the south of the continent, are being subjected to more heat stress during the summer months as climate change causes longer periods of extreme weather, a new study said today.
The European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said that comparisons of data over decades show record heat last year resulted in hazardous conditions for human health.
The report said: “Southern Europe experienced a record number of days with ‘very strong heat stress’,” defined as temperatures from 38°C to 46°C.
The number of summer days with “strong” (32°C to 38°C) or “very strong” heat stress is rising across the continent, while in southern Europe this is also the case for “extreme heat stress” days above 46°C, Copernicus said.
It’s “the most extreme event ever seen in European climatology,” said one climatologist. “Nothing stands close to this.”
As Europe closed the books on its warmest year ever recorded, an exceptionally potent winter heat dome descended on much of the continent over the holiday weekend, with thousands of daily and monthly high-temperature records shattered from Spain to Russia.
“The intensity and extent of warmth in Europe right now is hard to comprehend,” meteorologist Scott Duncan toldThe Times of London. “There are too many records to count. Literally thousands. Overnight minimum temperatures are like summer.”
The Times reported:
Bilbao in northern Spain reached 24.9°C, the hottest temperature recorded for the city in January and more akin to a summer’s day than the start of the year. Records were broken throughout Germany, including Dresden in the east where it was 13.5°C. Temperatures in Switzerland were at 20°C. The Czech Republic recorded a January national record of 19.6°C at the town of Javornik.
The Washington Postnoted that at least seven countries—Belarus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Poland—recorded their warmest January temperatures ever.
The New Year's heatwave stands as "the most extreme event ever in European climatology." In Poland, the old January record was broken before sunrise–in one town it was 65.7 degrees at 4 a.m., which is warmer than its average low temperature in midsummer https://t.co/FKa0NGBgbJ
Poland’s Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW) said Sunday that “the average daily temperature for Słubice was 15.3°C for the last day, and 15°C in Warsaw and Wrocław.”
“This means that we have a one-day thermal summer in the middle of winter,” IMGW added. “The thermal anomaly is over 15°C. This is an unprecedented situation in our climate.”
Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who specializes in extreme weather, called the temperatures “totally insane” and “absolute madness.”
It’s “the most extreme event ever seen in European climatology,” Herrera told the Post. “Nothing stands close to this.”
We just observed the warmest January day on record for many countries in Europe.
This exceptional wintertime warmth comes on the heels of the warmest 2022 in many parts of Europe, including in the U.K., Germany, and Switzerland. Extreme heat visited Europe in waves throughout the year and was intensified by a historically severe summer drought. The combination helped push the United Kingdom to 104°F (40°C) for the first time on record in July.
Climatologists said that while weather conditions caused the heat dome currently over Europe, there is a proven link between the continued burning of fossil fuels and rising global temperatures.
“The record-breaking across Europe over the new year was made more likely to happen by human-caused climate change,” Imperial College of London climate scientist Friederike Otto told The Times, “just as climate change is now making every heatwave more likely and hotter.”
FRANCE has experienced its hottest year since records began, the country’s national weather service said on Wednesday.
This comes as temperatures across the globe continue to soar to dangerous levels.
Extreme weather has devastated communities across the globe this year, including sweltering heat and drought conditions across Europe.
France saw temperatures surge repeatedly in successive heat waves from May and into October, accompanied by extreme events like wildfires in areas like north-western Brittany.
“[This year] will be the hottest year recorded in France since measurements began, so since at least 1900, that is a certainty, even if December is very cold,” said Matthieu Sorel, a climatologist at Meteo France.
In Brief: It’s not your imagination: Certain extreme events, like heat waves, are happening more often and becoming more intense. But what role are humans playing in Earth’s extreme weather and climate event makeover? Scientists are finding clear human fingerprints.
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There’s growing evidence that people and the planet are increasingly impacted by extreme events. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, “more frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events, as well as changes in average climate conditions, are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.”
As the impacts of extreme events continue to mount, interest has grown in the scientific community to study whether specific extreme events can be partially attributed to human activities. With the help of climate models, scientists have conducted an impressive array of studies, looking for possible links between human activities and extreme events such as heat waves, rainfall and flooding events, droughts, storms, and wildfires.
A dry lake bed. Scientists are seeing an increase in the intensity of droughts. Credit: NOAA
Increasingly, they’re able to draw robust connections. There are reductions in the number of cold waves, increases in the number of heat waves on the ocean and on land, increases in the intensity of rainfall and drought, and increases in the intensity of wildfires. Despite the complications and uniqueness of individual events, scientists are finding significant human contributions to many of them.
An interactive map produced by CarbonBrief in 2020, shown below, provides visible evidence of these studies. On it, red dots represent different extreme events where scientists have found a substantial contribution from human activities – that is, human activities have made these events more frequent or more intense. For some of the blue dots, however (associated with rainfall events), scientists have yet to find a substantial human contribution.
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The continued increase in global mean temperatures in response to rising levels of greenhouse gases sets the expectation that we’ll see a corresponding increase in global heat extremes. Indeed, this is being borne out by daily temperature data across the globe. Studies of individual heat waves, such as the devastating event that took place in the Pacific Northwest this summer, suggest such events have become tens to hundreds of times more likely because of human-driven climate change.
A global examination of how often heat waves are occurring, as well as their cumulative intensity (how many days heat waves last above a certain temperature level), published last year by Australian scientists from the Climate Change Research Centre and the University of New South Wales Canberra, reveals a clear increase of more than two days per decade in the number of heat wave days since the 1950s.
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The intensity of droughts is increasing. It’s not so much that scientists are seeing less rainfall, though that’s certainly happening in some places. Rather, in places where drought conditions exist, soils are becoming drier due to other factors, such as increased soil evaporation and decreased snowpack, which is reducing the amount of river flow during summer and fall. In the American Southwest, scientists estimate human-caused climate change is making droughts 30 to 50 percent more intense. 1
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There have been hurricanes and intense storms throughout history, so what’s changed? Model studies confirm that, for instance, about 20 percent of Harvey’s rainfall was attributable to human-produced warming of the climate and waters in the Gulf of Mexico. 2, 3 More generally, climate simulations confirm that this increased intensity is a robust result.
It’s important to note that impacts from extreme events are mainly a question of thresholds – the amount of flooding needed to overtop a levee, or overwhelm storm drains – so every inch (of additional rain) counts. So, while total rainfall may increase only slightly, it’s the extreme precipitation events that disproportionately cause problems.
The Bottom Line
The combination of models and observations, informed by the unique view that space provides, imply that almost all the current multi-decadal trends we’re seeing in climate are the result of human activities. In addition, there’s increasing confidence that human-induced climate change is making extreme events statistically much more likely.
This doesn’t mean every extreme event has a substantial human contribution. But with extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires and intense precipitation, we’re seeing, in event after event, a very clear human fingerprint.
