London is already reaching 35°C in May. We’re talking about a record that would be extraordinary in midsummer. France — “a country where much of its territory is low-lying and gently rolling” — is edging perilously toward 40°C, revealing how all those valley cities can turn into frying pans, like Seville or Córdoba. Central Europe, the Alps, the former Yugoslavia are watching temperatures go utterly bonkers.
“Literally, hundreds of May records have already been broken,” and the worst part is that there is no sign of a weakening on the horizon. The most relevant question today perhaps is why.
What is happening? “I will never stop being surprised to see a ridge […] so extreme for the time of year and spanning such a large record extent,” González Alemán said a few hours ago. And it’s not for nothing: each pink dot in the image below marks a historic May heat record. This week, Europe has turned into an inferno, and despite years of warnings, hardly anyone really expected it.
How is this possible? The explanation is simple. A powerful subtropical high has stretched across Western Europe and is producing what is commonly described as a “heat dome.” In other words, a situation in which surface air isn’t renewed, doesn’t move, and, as a consequence, it warms up little by little.
The next two maps illustrate perfectly what this heat dome is and where it is affecting most intensely.
What do they mean? The first image shows the size and reach of the anticyclone. Right now, a large swath of Europe is cloudless. The second shows the intensity of the phenomenon. As Jeff Berardelli explains, any red point represents a new May record (we’re using the 1950 baseline).
This has many names… “Atmospheric blocks,” quasi-resonant amplification of planetary waves, or the persistence of “double-jet” configurations over Eurasia. But the result is the same: the problem is no longer just the heat; today’s climate extremes are sticking around for days and days. “This is perhaps the clearest sign of the new climate that has nothing to do with what it was decades ago.”
And what can we do? That is a big question, because these heat waves (if, as they seem, they persist) will have a very clear consequence: Europe will have to update its housing stock from “houses designed to keep heat from escaping” to “houses designed to keep heat from entering.” We are facing one of the
Image | Tropical TidBits
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