Austria, France, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland announced their hottest September on Friday. The unseasonable warmth in Europe comes in a year expected to be the warmest in human history as climate change accelerates.
The European countries sweltered through a heat wave from June through August, when temperatures were often above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. That made it the hottest summer on record in Europe, surpassing the previous record set in 2016. The scorching weather also brought widespread drought, which slashed crop yields and caused wildfires.
According to French meteorologists, a kink in the jet stream, a ribbon of fast-moving air that drives weather systems across the Northern Hemisphere and controls temperature, allowed warm air to shift southwest into Europe from Africa. The European temperatures were also higher because of a lack of clouds.
In Germany, the national weather service DWD reported that average September temperatures were 3.6 degrees Celsius warmer than usual, the highest September since records began in 1961. Switzerland saw similar high temperatures in the Alpine region, with an average September temperature nearly 4 degrees Celsius above normal.
Scientists said the European warming is mainly due to human activities that emit greenhouse gases and heat the planet’s surface. Scientists say the accelerated warming creates more extreme and prolonged weather events, such as heat waves. The report by the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring agency comes as the world prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, founded to protest environmental destruction from oil spills and smog.
The report’s authors say the global warming trend is accelerating, with 2022 set to become the second warmest year on record, surpassing 2020. The data also shows that climate change is occurring faster than previously thought.
The report’s lead author, Francois Gemenne, says the alarming trends show how urgent it is to tackle carbon emissions. He warned that the temperature records will continue to break without an immediate change to global emissions. He says that particle pollution dampens warming by about a half-degree Celsius, which is why climate action must start immediately to cut greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. The report was published in Earth System Science Data, a new series of peer-reviewed publications meant to fill gaps between IPCC reports released every six years. The IPCC’s following major report is scheduled to be issued in 2023. It will focus on the impacts of climate change on people around the world. The UN hopes the report will help governments keep their commitments under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The report’s release comes on the eve of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai. The UN’s COP28 meeting will be the most important global gathering on climate change in over a decade. Organizers expect thousands of participants from around the world, including leaders from the US and China.
