Europe experiences record-breaking heat spell

Friday, January 6, 2023

Europe’s historic winter heatwave shattered several records in 2022, with 2023 following the suit.

At least eight nations reported their hottest Januarys on record. Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and the United Kingdom were among them. Data from climatologists suggest that the temperatures spiked to almost spring or even summer levels.

‘Heat dome’ forms over Europe
According to climatologists, the temperatures spiked to spring or summer levels. For instance, On January 1, temperatures in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, reached 18.9 degrees Celsius, more than 5 degrees higher than the previous record set thirty years earlier. In contrast, temperatures in portions of Belarus, where they typically hover around zero degrees Celsius, reached their highest point on January 1 at 16.4 degrees Celsius. When heated air is trapped over an area of high pressure for a long time, it forms a heat dome. The trapped air gets warmer by the sun’s scorching rays. Heat domes typically last a few days , but they can also last for up to weeks occasionally, causing catastrophic heat waves. This heat dome was intensified by climate change and if global temperatures aren’t within two degree Celsius above pre-industrialisation levels, this surge could become a once-in-10-year event.

Meteo-France declared in November that 2022 had been the country’s warmest year since records started in 1900. Average temperatures were put around 14.2-14.6°C. Following a 16.3°C reading at St James’s Park in London at the beginning of 2023, the UK experienced the warmest New Year’s Day on record. For their New Year’s Day temperatures, Scotland and Wales also set records. Based on a study by Met Office scientists, these record-breaking temperatures are also projected to occur more frequently, as an inevitable result of global climate change.

Dr Mark McCarthy, Head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre commented that it is obvious from these observational records that now the UK’s climate is already impacted by human induced global warming.

He goes on to say that if present global emissions targets are reached and the earth warms by 2.7°C by the end of this century, an average temperature of 10°C might “occur virtually every year.”

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