EU Heatwave - 100s Of Locations Reported Highest Temps On Record; So Did At Least Five Nations

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One thing is clear: the chances are exceedingly small that this week’s European heat wave could have been so strong without the temperature platform being raised by greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use. Several attribution studies have shown that odds of such a heat wave have been boosted many times over by human-produced climate change, as we discussed in our last post. […] There’s bitter irony in the fact that the birthplace of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change experienced the “long tail” effects of human-produced climate heating in full force this week, while much of the United States—which has announced its intention to leave the agreement—basked in unusually cool weather for July. (The two hardly balance each other out, although some observers have implied as much. In fact, July has a very good shot at being Earth’s warmest month on record.)

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Thursday was the hottest day ever observed at hundreds of locations where tens of millions of people live. An all-time heat record is a rare thing at any long-term observing site where temperatures have been measured for decades. On Thursday, virtually all of the primary weather stations in Belgium and the Netherlands set all-time records. In Germany, at least 139 locations saw all-time highs, representing a large chunk of the nation’s 400-plus observing sites, according to meteorologist Michael Theusner. And in France, at least 70 locations recorded all-time highs on Thursday, as compiled by international weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera.

Some of the all-time records were set by large margins. The Montsouris observing site in Paris reached 42.6°C (108.7°F), which broke the city’s 72-year-old all-time heat record by an incredible 4°F. In far northern France, Lille broke its all-time record by more than 5°F, hitting 41.5°C (106.7°F).

One of the oldest weather observing sites on Earth had its hottest day on record. The Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford, England, has been making regular temperature measurements since 1815. On Thursday, the observatory hit 36.5°C (97.7°F), breaking the all-time high of 35.1°C (95.2°F) set on August 19, 1932, and August 3, 1990. The new Radcliffe record was confirmed in an email from Stephen Burt, author of the definitive book Oxford Weather and Climate Since 1767.

Three nations set new all-time highs on Wednesday and then promptly broke them on Thursday. What’s more, a good number of cities piled onto the national breaking of heat records. Up until Tuesday, no city in Germany had been hotter than the 40.3°C (104.5°F) recorded in Kitzingen on July 5 and August 7, 2015. At least eleven German locations beat that mark on Thursday, as shown below, and at least ten places in the Netherlands were hotter on Thursday than anything observed in the entire country prior to Wednesday. […]

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https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Full-Scoop-Europes-Historic-Onslaught-Heat