France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, the Czech Republic… and, of course, Spain. Europe, especially the western part, is suffering the first heat wave – although scientifically it cannot be classified as such – of the year.
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Thermometers have already soared this weekend in these countries and this situation, with abnormal temperatures for the season above 30 degrees, will last at least all week.
Europe is going to record record temperatures for the month of May, with peaks up to 12 or 13 degrees above seasonal averages. The United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain will be the countries most affected by this early suffocating heat.
This weekend the mercury has already shot above 32 degrees in London, 31 in Paris and Rome, and 38 degrees in southern Spain.
This heat wave or “heat dome,” to be more precise, is the result of an anticyclonic blocking that helps maintain a mass of warm air coming from Morocco and Spain over western Europe. It is worth remembering that this continent is the fastest warming in the world, excluding the Arctic.
This “heat dome” or “heat dome” occurs, reports Meteored Spain, “as high pressure acts like a thermal lid, continuously trapping and compressing the descending air.” This ridge pushes warm subtropical air towards central Europe, increasing the heat.
This phenomenon, the same information states, “works like the lid of a pot exerting high atmospheric pressure over a wide area of a continent. This extensive dome traps hot air at all lower levels, with layers sinking towards the ground.”
The stifling atmosphere in much of Europe will depend in the coming days on the movement of this blocking anticyclone and its expansion. Over the next seven days, it is assumed that thermometers will continue to soar across the continent.
In Austria, another country hit by these high temperatures, thermometers marked 31 degrees in the west this weekend and climbed to 17 at altitudes above 2,000 meters.
The situation, reports Efe, is similar in Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, or Kosovo, with highs ranging between 26 and 32 degrees in an upward trend until Wednesday. In southern Bosnia-Herzegovina, more heat is expected, with up to 34 degrees on Wednesday.
In Spain, thermometers have already touched 38 degrees this weekend in the southwest of the peninsula and that stifling atmosphere, uncharacteristic for May, is expected to remain for at least the next seven days, according to forecasts from the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet).
It is a lot of temperature when it is not the time, but it cannot be called a “heat wave”
This climate anomaly in May cannot be classified, with the definition used by Aemet, as a heat wave. To declare this phenomenon, a certain number of meteorological stations must simultaneously exceed certain temperature thresholds for at least three consecutive days. These limits are set with the calendar of temperatures recorded in July and August over a specific historical period. They are summer thresholds, which now in May are impossible to reach – at least to date – with a global reading of all Spain.
Not being able to call it a heat wave does not prevent experts from warning about the health risks of this sudden temperature rise in the areas most affected by this “heat dome,” having gone from cold to a suffocating environment in just days.
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