Hundreds of weather stations across Europe recorded the highest daily temperature ever during the months of December or January. Several national meteorological and hydrological services across Europe confirm that 2022 was the warmest year on record in their respective countries.
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Europe breaks temperature records
High temperatures are plaguing Europe in the middle of winter and breaking all kinds of records, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported.
The UN agency noted that temperatures above 20°C occurred in many countries across Europe, including central Europe, and that several nations from Spain to eastern Europe broke national and many local temperature records during December and January.
Hundreds of weather stations across Europe recorded the highest daily temperature ever during those two months. For example, on 31 December the mercury reached a record high of 25.1°C in the Spanish city of Bilbao, surpassing the 24.4°C of 1 January 2022.
Other notable examples of high temperatures on the last day of 2022 were the 18.9°C reached in Warsaw, the capital of Poland, which beat the 13.8°C of January 1993; or the 19.4°C recorded in the German city of Dresden, which smashed the all-time high of 17.7°C of 5 December 1961.
An area of high pressure over the Mediterranean basin and an Atlantic low-pressure system caused a strong southwesterly flow that brought warm air from northwest Africa to mid-latitudes. In the eastern North Atlantic, sea surface temperatures were 1 to 2°C higher than normal, and near the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, the increase was greater.
The publication of these record highs coincided with confirmation from several European national meteorological and hydrological services – including AEMET (Spain), Meteo France (France), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany) and the Met Office (UK) – that 2022 was the warmest year on record in their respective countries.
Recent WMO data related to Europe
The frequency and intensity of extreme heat events, including marine heat waves, have increased in recent decades and are projected to continue to increase regardless of the greenhouse gas emissions scenario.
Critical thresholds for ecosystems and humans are projected to be exceeded with global warming of 2°C or more above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. The Paris Agreement sets the goal of limiting this increase to a maximum of 1.5°C.
Two months ago, the WMO published the State of Europe’s Climate Report 2021, which reported significant temperature increases in Europe over the period 1991-2021, at an average rate of about +0.5°C per decade, the highest of any continent in the world and more than twice the global average.
Despite La Niña conditions keeping global temperatures down for the second year in a row, 2022 is still likely to be the 5th or 6th warmest year on record globally.