Climate Change - The European Heatwave of June 2019

Map of anomalies in temperature (°C) estimated from ERA5 25-29 June 2019. ECMWF, Copernicus Climate Change Service).
An unusually early and exceptionally intense heatwave has set new temperature records in Europe and ensuring that the month of June was the hottest on record for the continent, with the average temperature 2° Celsius above normal.


"Every heatwave occurring in Europe today is made more likely and more intense by human-induced climate change," said a study published by scientists at World Weather Attribution .

Currently such an event is estimated to occur with a return period of 30 years, but similarly-frequent heatwaves would have likely been about 4 ºC cooler a century ago. 

In other words, a heatwave of this intensity is occurring at least 10 times more frequently today than a century ago.

The hottest summers in Europe in the last 500 years have all come in the last 17 years.

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