Published 2024-04-24 22.32
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Europe has had a record breaking night.
In Rethymnon on Crete it was 29.3 degrees – the coldest.
– In a warmer world, we will see significantly more heat records than cold records, says meteorologist Lasse Rydqvist.
The night of Tuesday was warmer than a normal July night in the Greek city of Rethymnon.
The minimum temperature of 29.3 degrees is a new April record for the whole of Europe.
At the same time, it is really cold elsewhere in our continent. Italy has had January weather. And in Sweden, many people probably had to pick out the down jacket again this weekend.
– We have a real cold air race basically down to the Mediterranean. Even in southern Spain, France and Italy, cold air has moved in, says Lasse Rydqvist, meteorologist at Klart.
This is because the jet stream settled down as a “bend” all the way down to the Mediterranean Sea. Then a low pressure has formed which has drawn up warm air from north-east Africa to Greece.
At the same time as the warm air has been prevented from getting further up into Europe.
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Record after record is broken
Heat records are becoming an increasingly common feature in the news.
March 2024 was the warmest March month recorded on Earth so far, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate service. It was the tenth record month in a row.
In Europe, a record number of days with “extreme heat stress” were recorded last year. It is also the continent that is warming the fastest.
And we can count on significantly more heat records in the future, while cold records will become more rare, says Lasse Rydqvist.
This year, global warming has also been boosted by the weather phenomenon El Nino.
– The fact that climate change is accelerating is that we are seeing record months and record years now – despite the fact that we had stronger El Niño phenomena in the past. The one we have now is significantly weaker than the one we had in 2016, for example, says Lasse Rydqvist.
