In Europe, the hottest days are seeing their maximum temperatures increase twice as fast as the average summer ones: the most affected is the north-western part, with England, Wales and northern France in the lead. This was discovered by the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by the British University of Oxford, which analyzed data for 60 years, from 1960 to 2021. The authors of the study therefore sound the alarm: urgent action is needed to adapt essential infrastructure to the impacts of these extreme heatwaves, such as that of summer 2022, which are underestimated by current climate models.
The results collected by researchers led by Matthew Patterson show a clear general trend for temperatures recorded on the hottest days of the year, which are growing at twice the rate of those on average summer days. For England and Wales, for example, while average summer temperatures have risen by around 0.26C per decade, those on hot days have seen a jump of 0.58C per decade.
The causes of this phenomenon are not yet clear. According to Patterson, it could be due to the fact that the hottest summer days in North-Western Europe are often connected to the hot air coming from Spain: this region, in fact, is warming up faster and therefore the air transported north has more extreme temperatures than in northern countries. The 2022 heat wave, for example, was driven by a plume of hot air arriving north from Spain and the Sahara, but further studies are needed to confirm or deny this mechanism.
Source: Ansa
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