At least seven countries saw thousands of temperature records broken as a strong heat dome descended on Europe on New Year’s Day.
Between Saturday and Monday – as the old year was being ushered out to make way for a new year, temperatures soared from 18 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 20 Celsius) from France to western Russia, according to the Washington Post.
The extreme warm spell followed a record-warm year in many parts of Europe and provided yet another example of how human-caused climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of such extraordinary weather events.
PBS.org is reporting that skiing meccas – like Innsbruck in Austria, Villars-Sur-Ollon, and Crans-Montana in Switzerland, and Germany’s Lenggries – are not looking like winter wonderlands. Instead, large patches of grass, rock, and dirt are visible, reviving concerns about temperature upheaval linked to climate change.
The start to 2023 picked up where many countries had already left off: Last year was the hottest on record in both Switzerland and France. Germany had nearly 950 records broken from December 30 to January 2. Only Norway, Britain, Ireland, Italy, and the southeast Mediterranean posted no records this weekend.
Alex Burkill, a senior meteorologist at the Met Office, agreed it was an extreme weather event. “It’s been extreme heat across a huge area, which is almost, to be honest, unheard of,” he said, reports The Guardian.
Burkill said a warm air mass that developed off the west coast of Africa had traveled north-east across Europe from Portugal and Spain, pulled in by high pressure over the Mediterranean.
Meteorologist Scott Duncan said the temperatures across Europe were staggering. “We had a very warm new year last year but this blows that out of the water,” he said. “We observed longstanding records broken by large margins across several countries.”
