And as more European ski resorts at lower altitudes struggle to provide their visitors with adequate snow cover in the early season, the WMO showed generally accepted, peer-reviewed scientific data by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggesting that the frequency of cold spells and frost days will “decrease”.
“A sharp decline in glaciers, permafrost, snow cover and snow season lengths at high latitudes/high altitudes is observed and will continue in a warming world,” the IPCC said.
According to the UN agency, New Year’s temperatures rose above 20 degrees Celsius (C) in many European countries, even in Central Europe.
National and many local temperature records for December and January were also broken in several countries, from southern Spain to eastern and northern parts of Europe, the WMO said.
The temperatures are taking off in Spain
On January 1, 25.1 °C was measured at Bilbao Airport in Spain smash the previous all-time record, set 12 months earlier, by 0.7 °C.
And in the normally cool eastern French town of Besançon at this time of year, temperatures hit 18.6 degrees on New Year’s Day, a new all-time high of 1.8 degrees Above the previous record from January 1918.
In the German city of Dresden, the 1961 New Year’s record of 17.7 °C was surpassed by the 19.4 °C on December 31, 2022, just as Polish Warsaw residents saw the New Year with temperatures of 18.9 °C, a a staggering 5.1°C higher than the previous all-time record for January, set in 1993.
Further north, on the Danish island of Lolland, 2023 started with a new high of 12.6°C, surpassing the record 12.4°C set in 2005.
ups and downs
The WMO attributed the warm period in Europe to a high pressure system over the Mediterranean region that met an Atlantic low pressure system.
Their interaction “induced a strong south-west current that brought warm air from north-west Africa to mid-latitudes,” the UN agency explained, adding that this above-average hot air “was further warmed as it passed through the North Atlantic to a higher-than-average sea surface temperature.”
Highlighting the influence of warmer seawater on weather patterns, the WMO found that sea surface temperatures in the eastern North Atlantic were 1°C to 2°C higher than normal and “even more near the coasts of Iberia”.
“All of this caused record-breaking heat on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in several European countries,” WMO concluded.
In recent years, Bosnia and Herzegovina in Eastern Europe has been affected by extreme weather events related to climate change, ranging from intense rains to heat waves.
sign of time
The extreme weather events experienced in Europe are expected to continue to increase, the WMO warned as it recently mentioned analysis published with “high confidence” by the influential UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Regardless of future global warming, temperatures in all European areas will increase at a rate that exceeds global mean temperature changes, similar to previous observations,” the IPCC said.
According to the IPCC Regional Fact Sheet for Europe“Frequency and intensity of heat extremes, including marine heatwaves, have increased in recent decades and are projected to continue to increase regardless of the greenhouse gas emissions scenario.”
The panel’s experts also warned that “critical thresholds” for the environment and people “are likely to be exceeded at global warming of 2°C and above”.
