Record Breaking Heatwave In Europe?
By Paul Homewood.
.
.
.
Most of the so-called reporting of the European heatwave seems to have centred around of temperature forecasts, rather than actual ones, along with claims of “records” and images of people enjoying the sun. Factual reporting appears to have taken a holiday!
Take the Telegraph article above, published on 18th July. It begins:
Rome was among several European regions to breach temperature records on Tuesday as a Covid-style protocols were rolled out across Italy to protect its hospitals from the unprecedented heatwave.
A new record was set in the Italian capital when the local weather agency recorded highs of 41.8C (107.2F), beating the previous record set in June last year by 1C.
The European Space Agency said thermometers could tip 48C in Sardinia and Sicily, while the temperatures in Rome and Madrid could both reach the mid to high-40Cs.
In drought-stricken Spain, temperatures were set to reach highs of 44C in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands while the country is in the final throes of an election campaign before Sunday’s vote.
..
Let’s examine some of these claims more closely:
.
- A new record was set in the Italian capital when the local weather agency recorded highs of 41.8C (107.2F), beating the previous record set in June last year by 1C.
For a start, the previous record was not 40.8C, as implied. A temperature of 42.0C was recorded at the Ponte di Nona in 2005
.
https://www.ecad.eu/indicesextremes/customquerytimeseriesplots.php
.
As for this week, the temperature at Rome’s Urbe Airport only reached 40C:
.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/italy/rome/historic
.
- thermometers could tip 48C in Sardinia and Sicily
And pigs might fly!
Alghero, which is on the north coast of Sardinia, only hit 40C, a long way short of its record high of 41.8C, set in 1983.
.
.
There are of course places further south in Sardinia which would naturally be much hotter, but there is no evidence that any of these were hotter this week than in the past. The BBC is particularly good at finding some obscure little village with a high temperature, without offering any historical perspective to compare it with.
And Sicily? Catania, the island’s biggest city, hit 39C on Wednesday. The record there is 46.7C, set in 1962.
.
.
- temperatures in Rome and Madrid could both reach the mid to high-40Cs.
As we have seen, Rome never got above 41.8C at the most.
As for Madrid, temperatures only reached 39C, nothing out of the ordinary at all for the nation’s capital:
.
.
..
- In drought-stricken Spain, temperatures were set to reach highs of 44C in Catalonia
This is probably the most absurd forecast of the lot, as temperatures in Barcelona did not get above 30C!
.
.
It was hot this week in much of Europe, very hot in places.
But I have found no evidence that the heatwave was in any way unprecedented, never mind the inferno suggested.
CORRECTION
The temperature graph used for Madrid was actually Malaga! I have now replaced with the correct graph.
I have also included the KNMI chart for Catania, which has a longer data record
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Most of those charts only go back to 1959-60 and end long before now. The red-line trends seem to be hand-drawn. Is that a fair assessment?
Yes hand-drawn. Are you being silly?
No.. not silly. It was the lengths of the charts as well as the estimates.
I was fascinated by Stew Green’s comment in the Rowlatt piece about the fact that Spain’s publicised temperature readings are being derived from satellites which are actually reading ground temps, not air temps – and the difference can be up to 10C. If that is the case it needs to be looked into, especially if the BBC is knowingly relying on them for their hysterical news reports.
(Written, overlooking my soaking wet, cold garden where it has rained all day! Rowlatt should be reporting on the incredibly cold, wet summer. But there is no mileage in that.)
It should be re-labelled the weather forecast for ants. Given their size, every rain shower must seem like a flood too.
Harry I’m not saying all BBCnews figs were land surface temps
but here’s a good example
of a map used on the news
vs one used on the BBCweather app
OK that pic is no showing fully on my screen
As ever clicking the tweet will open it up
or This should be the full one
.. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1bgnmiXoAEfa8C.jpg:small
Well said Paul.
At last – people are starting to cotton-on. We only need 18% of the population to be onboard with correcting this trash nonsense from the mainstream media – and their crusade is finished. 18% (apparently) is a ‘tipping point’ for when the large mass of people begin to accept something as worth fighting for/against. I sense we are getting closer – and we need to keep pushing. I am really pleased I came onto this site. It changed my thinking. It also lost me ‘friends’, but in all honesty – people who believe this tripe about climate emergencies are not people I want as very close friends. Besides – these less close friends will (hopefully) eventually sober up and re-join the rest of us.
Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows, survey shows
Fewer than half of those questioned in global poll believe climate change poses a ‘very serious threat’
Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, with fewer than half of those questioned in a new survey believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries over the next 20 years.
Only 20% of people in China, the world’s biggest polluter, said they believed that climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percentage points from the last survey by Gallup World Risk Poll in 2019.
Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percentage points to 48.7% in 2021. The survey was based on more than 125,000 interviews in 121 countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/19/concern-about-climate-change-shrinks-globally-as-threat-grows-survey-shows
An Ofcom survey has shown that now only 49% of people use BBC News as their primary news source. Encouraging and let us hope it slides down further with the Huw scandal and their promoting the lie about Farage and Coutts.
The Mail is the leading ‘newspaper’ but sadly it often fails to expose things and is on board with the Covid vax cover up and cheer leads over Ukraine. At least today’s MoS has Ross Clark looking at the heatwave hype but sadly he claims that extreme temperatures and heatwaves are more common despite the lack of evidence.
I’m getting a bit fed up with fellow skeptics trying to rubbish the heatwave – and the worst is not over yet. Lots of places have reached between 41-47C measured legitimately, so far, which is within a fraction of the records predicted in most cases. This ground/air angle is also dubious. Spain ground satellite read temperatures were widely 60C not in the 40s, it just seems like semantics, someone used a slightly inaccurate turn of phrase – proper temperatures were predicted in the 40s and did reach the mid 40s.
The only complaint skeptics can have is that the real severe heat has been fairly localised/in narrow bands, and only lasting for a day or 2 in individual locations. Not exactly the impression the media has created.
In fact it was nearly 48C, Wednesday, a weather station in south-central Sardinia registered 47.7C
You can see here the bright pink areas of extreme heat.
Sorry, MrGN….I’m dying to ask, as per Steve’s post about ground temps v air temps, we now have to ask: which?
As I’ve repeatedly said, legitimate air temperatures measured on standard weather stations reached 40-48C, as per the predictions that some people are trying to claim were ground surface predictions. As such, it’s a pointless debate anyway.
But how do we know if that us unusual?
I’ve no idea Paul, I don’t think it’s anything but weather, clearly similar temperatures/heatwaves have occurred before (Athens1977 48C), but when politicised weather bureaus and the media start playing top trumps with bingo card style record claims on combinations of duration, area, date etc. you’d need weeks to crosscheck, even if you can find/access reliable data.
My point, GN, as per Stew’s comment, was not that the air temps were correct, it was, how do we know they (who are they?) are quoting air OR ground temps, given that ground temps can be a lot higher than air temps. What it comes down to is that I wouldn’t trust broadcast numbers if they told me I’d got six numbers on the lottery. They have far too much to lose. So I’m not having a go at you,
“As I’ve repeatedly said, legitimate air temperatures measured on standard weather stations reached 40-48C”
Mr GM can you actually name or refer to a source/s that actually substantiate those figures because despite trying I cannot find sources indicating verifiable levels of those higher end figures.
I agree there are unusual weather patterns at the moment coupled with high land temperatures and sea surface anomalies.
At the moment there is no plausible explanation from the climate doomsters on the mechanism that links these 2 phenomenon to CO2 atmospheric warming.
Judith Curry has produced a plausible explanation for the high (record breaking) North Atlantic Sea surface anomalies but as the explanation doesn’t involve AGW it gets no attention.
In my life, I recall being really hot twice — once in the summer of 1950 but I don’t remember the details. Then 2 years ago I had 46.7°C (116°F).
The responsible thing for reporters and others is to publicize the episode and spread the word on proper care (and looking after others). It seems there are many folks that clueless. Mention of shade, fans, spray bottles, and misters is missing in most reports.
The emphasis on calling on climate change to promote an agenda is misguided and wrong. In 1950 the concentration of CO2 was 310 ppm.
The trap is that in pushing back against the ludicrous media coverage of an unusual but not ‘impossible without AGW’ random weather situation, skeptics could damage their own credibility.
Mr GM I am rather losing the thread of your objections. All I personally want are sources that substantiate claims being made and I genuinely cannot find them. Can you supply sources?
As I said on the other thread to I mostly agree with MrGrimNasty
We can’t say that all the hot weather claims are rubbish
just cos BBC sometimes used outrageous temp map with surface temps on ..and failed to mention they were ot the normal air temps
Some selected spots do seem to have had record high moments
but I don’t always think that counts for much, I’d pay more attention to the daily average rather than momentary peaks.
After all of the temperature tampering which has been documented in the US, Australia and the UK I am by default now totally skeptical of any “record” promoted by the climate doomists infesting the BBC. Totally inappropriate instantaneous temperatures taken at wholly inappropriate locations now are “proof”. It is one thing to have “data” and another thing how it is used. The BBC and their equally infected partners in crime the Met Office take a single point and extrapolate it. So one momentary temperature “recorded” at one inappropriately located site is extrapolated across the whole of a country and indeed pushed as representative of the whole country. When did the system change from the average over a period of time to an instant temperature? I assume this came with digital recording but is this now official and is it appropriate? To my mind, this is done with the deliberate intention to deceive and then we have to ask the next question, why if the effect they claim is caused by man is so clear and the data so compelling, is there any need to sex up the results?
In Norway it has been cold, really cold. Now in July it feels like autumn. Even in direct sunlight the air has been consistently cold. Why no mention of that by the impartial purveyors of truth?
The best the BBC could come up with when 70 million promised “record breaking temperatures” in the UK see a typically wet British summer is…… yes you’ve guessed it, the genius of the nonsense catchall…proof of climate change.
You have to ask yourself why when we had extreme and prolonged cold seen last winter did the BBC soberly report it yet when it comes to heat they literally wet themselves. They really want bad things to happen, for people to suffer. This is a death cult. The BBC and the Met Office no longer are interested in telling us about weather, but a completely flawed interpretation of climate which they have deliberately conflated with weather or their arts graduate muddled interpretation of what that means. Natural warming since the end of the Little Ice Age is NEVER considered, conveniently also conflated with the asininity of AGW. Records and extremes are the life blood of these climate shamans who in a previous life would have been better suited to jobs with the News of the World or Titbits. Beyond this is the bizarre delight they take from disasters and “records”. It is as if they are desperate for signs to appear from their climate god(s) to prove that Armageddon is on it’s way. With any of the other death cults of history however the “truth tellers” were to be spared in some way. How will this lot avoid hot weather?
@Pardon if you see Saturdays anomaly map you can see some part of Norway were way below normal and that most of Europe seems below normal
Italy and Greece and Ukraine excepted
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F1qybJXXwAIkXvP.png:small
Not Ukraine, I mean Yugoslavia and Bulgaria
Lots of places? Not so.
Legitimate? We don’t know yet.
No dubious use of land temperatures? Not true.
Forecasts within a fraction of turnouts? Only in a few cases.
The media is quite clear mixing and matching various methodologies to paint an inaccurate picture.
“I’m getting a bit fed up with fellow skeptics trying to rubbish the heatwave – and the worst is not over yet.”
Screw the numbers. They are pointless. The problem is that the climate communists are trying to drive public policy with OUTLIERS. Records as such are statistically useless.
I’m here in Seville, like Cordoba and Cadiz in the valley of Guadalquivir where the heat is always crazy and I’ve not noticed anything I’ve not seen before, certainly not the heat of 2004 and 2005.
Looking at the data which doesn’t go back further than 70 years, the highest temperatures were on the 19th of August 1982 when Rota reached 47ºC and at the same time Cadiz (just a few miles away) reached 43ºC, Cordoba 47º and Sevilla 43º. In the case of Cadiz it broke the record by about 3º and has never since reached close to 43ºC.
Was the King of Spain’s beard singed again?
I reckon it singed his pubes mate but I don’t have that data !
I understand that the heat was primarily in a narrow band running through the middle of Sardinia. From a previous link to an Italian web site I understand these weather stations were installed in 2002.
It would be very interesting to get a photo of some of the stations as the Weather recording is handled by the Italian military. It may well be that the instruments are situated on military bases with a similar impact to the UK’s record last year.
“It would be very interesting to get a photo of some of the stations as the Weather recording is handled by the Italian military” So would I!!!!!
The Italian met office is run by the Italian Air Force.
Hey finallygot it! “Stazione Metereologica di Decimomannu Aeroporto”
This is where the “record” was supposedly set.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Stazione+Metereologica+di+Decimomannu+Aeroporto/@39.3428649,8.9686636,2000m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x12e7471d41ab91ed:0xb29074b5501a0b8a!2sDecimomannu+Air+Base!8m2!3d39.3424003!4d8.9501617!16s%2Fm%2F07k4p6x!3m5!1s0x12e747aa5a69a531:0xacac10169ef64b89!8m2!3d39.343947!4d8.970694!16s%2Fg%2F1q54w11pc?entry=ttu
Nowhere near Coningsby but remarkably similar?
Speaking of Coningsby, slightly off topic:
Hi Cat, great clip. I’m down in Kent very near many old RAF bases with most notably Hawkinge. You’ve got to visit this place (if you haven’t already) https://www.kbobm.org
When I was a kid at the Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone they filmed this locally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain_(film)
Me and a few others finagled our way into being extras. We met Susannah York and ….well as teenage boys I am sure you can guess how we felt!
I remember dogfight scenes being filmed overhead while playing cricket at school in Thanet. Manston was not far away, and we got regular overflights from the Vulcans (including the one used as the Olympus 593 Concorde engine testbed that was flown supersonic to rattle the windows) and the Air-Sea rescue Westland that paid us a visit landing on the football field. Trainer Chipmunks were also a regular sight, and the occasional Argosy freighter. All at low altitudes.
Great sleuthing, Ray. The rather large white concrete (?) area to the left of the weather station looks suspiciously like hard-standing for aircraft to my old RAF eyes. I wonder what classification the site has according to the standards….
Hopefully this very long Street view link works which shows the station from ground level.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.3388811,8.9762089,3a,15y,107.11h,88.07t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sk9yUOFz–a20mjRZlIUY9A!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Dk9yUOFz–a20mjRZlIUY9A%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D115.441986%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
If it does you can see this is a rather poor site. Any aircraft taking off at “record” time?
new video
“Neil Oliver: Weather maps are among the most blatant forms of fearmongering deployed so far.”
He spends the first 4 mins doing a warmup
The Pizza Pie Weather Maps
.. https://youtu.be/lvvBp25eh0U
The next “hottest evah” event for the climate doomsters will be the North Atlantic Sea surface temperature anomalies.
Not quite sure how CO2 warming of the atmosphere gets transferred so quickly to the ocean perhaps its witchcraft.
Hello Mr. Homewood. Whether or not the temperatures in Europe are
‘records’, the continued rhetoric of the majority of the press, notably
the BBC of course, needs to be highlighted as both misleading and, in
the case of the wildfires in Rhodes / Greece, possibly inaccurate. The
hot weather does not ’cause’ wildfires – the dryness of the undergrowth
might exacerbate the issue, (probably), but frankly I don’t know, but
whether poor forest management (how many times have we heard that one?),
is also contributory, I don’t know. There is something called a ‘fire
triangle – vis a vis oxygen, fuel and heat (ignition source). Heat,
per-se, is not an ignition source, it is more accurately, I beleive, an
‘ignition source’.
The BBC bias is increasing regardless, I don’t know if you read the
Mail, we buy it on Saturdays for the magazine. A couple of things caught
my eye. One was the Sarah Vine ‘My TV Week’, which looks at Packham’s
self promoting rubbish, the other Tuesday 25th July ‘pick of the day’,
the awful Justin Rowlett’s documentary on electric cars. I doubt I’ll be
able to bring myself to watch it to be honest. I wonder if he’ll
reference the environmental disaster that is rare earth / lithium etc
mining, and Volvo’s own website that clearly shows the impact of
electric cars in terms of CO2 impact for 50,000 miles or so.
Also, the attached criticism of the red orange temperatures are another
clear example – people are now picking up that is was pretty chilly here
in the UK yet we are still being shown as orange.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Trevor Shurmer
Hi Trevor, this masters thesis will answer your questions.
Click to access maheras_georgios.pdf
A long read but very instructive and no laying of blame on bogus climate change.
Thank you Ray. I have not had time to read it yet, but I will do and I hope it confirms my suspicions that no matter how hot the weather is a tree will not just catch fire.
Sorry, what I wrote re ignition sources is gobbledygook. What I meant was heat alone is not an ignition source, what is required is a spark or flame or something that will heat the fuel to above it’s ignition point – for example, sun’s ray magnified through glass, playing on ignitable materials. Hopefully that makes more sense!
Air temp and ground temp? Watch F1 and see the difference of track temp and air temp, it can be quite large.
Okay, this was Sardinia’s view on the situation of their “record” heat .
“Non si arresta l’incremento delle temperature in Sardegna, da quasi due settimane nella morsa del caldo. Oggi che questa ondata di caldo raggiunge il picco sull’Italia, l’isola ha toccato punte di +47°C, in particolare a Sestu, nella città metropolitana di Cagliari, che ha registrato la temperatura di +47,2°C. La Sardegna ha così eguagliato il record per la temperatura più alta mai registrata. Nell’agosto del 1957, si toccarono +47,2°C a Muravera. Anche 66 anni fa, quindi, nell’isola si era raggiunta la stessa temperatura massima di oggi, in barba agli allarmismi tipici del catastrofismo sul cambiamento climatico.”
Translation;
“The increase in temperatures in Sardinia does not stop, for almost two weeks in the grip of the heat. Today, as this heat wave reaches its peak in Italy, the island has reached peaks of +47°C, in particular in Sestu, in the metropolitan city of Cagliari, which recorded the temperature of +47.2°C. Sardinia thus equaled the record for the highest temperature ever recorded. In August 1957, it reached +47.2°C in Muravera. Even 66 years ago, therefore, the same maximum temperature was reached on the island as today, in defiance of the alarmism typical of catastrophism on climate change.”
https://www.meteoweb.eu/2023/07/sardegna-eguagliato-record-storico-caldo/1001274863/
The Sestu is NOT an official site of the Italian Meteorological Office. The nearest official site to Sestu is a Cagliari airport and only reached 42°C. the next nearest official site was the one I linked to above which reached 45.2°C
So yes it was hot, and yes several unofficial sites (of no doubt highly dubious location and accuracy) did measure high temperatures but as fara as Sardinia was concerned no official records were broken or even got especially close to being broken.
Of very interesting note is the last sentence above:
” in defiance of the alarmism typical of catastrophism on climate change.”
The Italians all think it is cobblers just like we do.
Footnote: Sanders was not my father’s original surname – he was Italian and his name was Scandolo. He changed his name after joining the British Army in WW2 and working in the Intelligence service (Green Howards)and assuming his new name having watched actor George Sanders in a film. Naturally I have Italian relatives who assure me there was nothing exceptional about the recent heatwave.