The UN’s designation of the last decade as the hottest recorded decade has been bolstered by the recent heatwaves. More that 40% of Europe’s peak temperature fell in the period from 2012.
Scientists agree that climate change will lead to more extreme weather events. The landmark UN report signed by 270 scientists representing 67 countries earlier in the year concluded that even lower levels of global warming pose greater risks than previously thought.
The planet has warmed up by at least 1.1C in the pre-industrial period due to human activity. It is expected that it will continue to warm even if greenhouse gases emissions are rapidly reduced.
According to FT analysis and new records for England Scotland Wales Northern Ireland, 21 of 47 European all-time highs were recorded between 2012 and 2012.
48.8C was recorded in Siracusa in Italy in August 2021. According to data compiled by weather historians and climatologists, Spain and Greece were the only other nations to have reached 48C. Maximiliano Herrera.
Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at the US commercial forecaster AccuWeather, said the European heatwave in July “will go down in the record books as a truly historic event — one of the most extreme and impactful heatwaves in Europe.”
The UK record of 40.3C reached last week was notable for two reasons, Stephen Belcher, chief scientist at the UK’s Met Office, has said. The first was that the record was broken with a full 1.5C instead of fractions of degrees.
Second, the very high temperatures were experienced over a large area: “That was a surprise . . . to get such a big area breaking records,” he told the BBC. Without climate change, temperatures of more than 40C would have been “virtually impossible,” Belcher said.
As wildfires tore through parts of France, Spain and Portugal, Copernicus, the EU’s Earth monitoring programme, said that large parts of western Europe continued to face an “extreme” and “very extreme” risk of fire.
Copernicus reported that the total carbon emissions resulting solely from the fires in Spain during June and July were among the highest since 2003, when the data began being collected.
Globally, last years was the fifth-warmest, according Copernicus. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first six months in 2022 rank sixth for the hottest January to June period.
The modern meteorological community is examining historical temperature records, but they remain controversial. Experts reviewing the data cite concerns over instrumentation, location, and observer reliability as some of the methodological issues.
Europe’s oldest heat record is held by Ireland at 33.3C, documented at Kilkenny Castle in 1887, has been questioned by climatologists but the national weather service has stood by it. That would place the past week’s high of 33C as the second-highest temperature on record for Ireland.
Despite questioning some pre-industrial records the common accepted national records of the past century reveal a clear pattern for climate change.
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