Another European heatwave

Forecast temperature anomaly across Europe, 26th July 2019
Source: Insider

Less than a month ago, the June European heatwave caused records to tumble.  Now there's another heatwave which is doing it again.


From The Guardian:

Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have recorded their highest ever temperatures as the second extreme heatwave in as many months to be linked by scientists to the climate emergency grips the continent.

The Dutch meteorological service, KNMI, said the temperature reached 39.2C (102.5F) at the Gilze-Rijen airbase near Breda on Wednesday afternoon, exceeding the previous high of 38.6C set in August 1944.

In Belgium, the temperature in Kleine-Brogel hit 38.9C, fractionally higher than the previous record of 38.8C set in June 1947. Forecasters said temperatures could climb further on Thursday.

Germany’s national weather service, DWD, said it believed a new all-time national high of 40.5C – 0.2C higher than the record – had been set in the town of Geilenkirchen near the Dutch and Belgian borders, but had still to confirm it.

After several cities in France broke previous temperature records on Tuesday, including Bordeaux, which hit 41.2C, the national weather service, Météo France, said Paris was likely to beat its all-time high of 40.4C, set in July 1947, with 42C on Thursday.

City records in Amsterdam and Brussels are also expected to fall. Cities are particularly vulnerable in heatwaves because of a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, in which concrete buildings and asphalt roads absorb heat during the day and emit it again at night, preventing the city from cooling.

The highest ever June temperatures were recorded in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Andorra, Luxembourg, Poland and Germany, while France registered an all-time record high of 45.9C in the southern commune of Gallargues-le-Montueux.

Clare Nullis, a World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman, said the heatwaves bore the “hallmark of climate change”. The extreme events were “becoming more frequent, they’re starting earlier, and they’re becoming more intense”, she said. “It’s not a problem that’s going to go away.”

The 26-28 June heatwave in France was 4C hotter than a June heatwave would have been in 1900, according to World Weather Attribution, a new international programme helping the scientific community to analyse the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events.

A study published earlier this year by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich said the summer heatwave across northern Europe last year would have been “statistically impossible” without climate change driven by human activity.

Scientists have said such heatwaves are closely linked to the climate emergency and will be many times more likely over the coming decades.

Last month, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said Europe’s five hottest summers since 1500 had all occurred in the 21st century – in 2018, 2010, 2003, 2016 and 2002.

Monthly records were now falling five times as often as they would in a stable climate, the institute said, adding that this was “a consequence of global warming caused by the increasing greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and gas”.

[Read more here]


I still encounter cockwombles who maintain that global heating isn't happening, that it's meteorologists making up the data, and that it's all a leftist UN plot to create world domination.   But I think most ordinary people are now convinced, from their own experience, that global warming is happening.  What we have to watch out for now is greenwashing—where politicians and companies piously agree that global heating is a problem, but actually do nothing about it, the whole point being to stifle and deflect public concern while continuing with 'business as usual'.

It looks likely that globally, July will once again set a temperature record, making it all but certain that 2019 will be the second hottest year ever recorded after 2016, which was an El Niño year.  This year there is not an El Niño, yet records keep on tumbling.

Every government worth its salt should commit to an annual reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases starting in 2020 and continuing thereafter until we reach zero.  Solemn protestations that in some far-off future we will reach zero emissions are meaningless, just as my promise that I will be thin in 2021 is.  To get to some future state of zero emissions we need to starting cutting emissions, now, instead of increasing them.  Pious hopes aren't enough.

Action now, policies now, laws now.  That's our target: 5% per annum.  Get cracking.

Update (26/7/19):

Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have recorded all-time national temperature highs for the second day running and Paris has had its hottest day ever as the second dangerous heatwave of the summer sears western Europe.

The extreme temperatures follow a similar heatwave last month that made it the hottest June on record. Scientists say the climate crisis is making summer heatwaves five times more likely and significantly more intense.

Wednesday’s Dutch record of 39.3C (102.7F), set in Eindhoven, lasted less than 24 hours, with the mercury at a weather station at the southern Gilze-Rijen airbase climbing on Thursday afternoon to 40.4C, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) said.

After recording a new high of 40.2C at Angleur on Wednesday, Belgium’s Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI-RMI) said the temperature at Kleine Brogel near the Dutch border rose on Thursday to 40.6C. The previous records in both countries dated back to the 1940s.

“This is the highest recorded temperature for Belgium in history – since the beginning of measurements in 1833,” said the KMI-RMI’s Alex Dewalque. Britain also set a new temperature record for July and was on course to register an all-time high.

Germany’s national DWD weather service said it measured 41.5C in the north-western town of Lingen on Thursday, the first time the temperature has been recorded above 41C in the country. It came a day after an all-time national high of 40.5C was recorded in Geilenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Météo-France said the mercury at its Paris-Montsouris station in the French capital surpassed the previous high of 40.4C, set in July 1947, soon after 1pm and continued to climb, reaching 42.6C soon after 4pm.

“And it could climb even higher,” the service said, noting that 43C in the shade “is the average maximum temperature in Baghdad, Iraq in July”. David Salas y Mélia, a climatologist.

[Read more here]