Europe and the US had the hottest January ever with soaring temperatures. Russia’s energy crisis has been averted, but ski resorts are closed and fruit crops are expected to be poor. This phenomenon is due to global warming, which brought the average temperature of every European country to historic highs last year. Some climatologists say the opportunity to halt global warming and the damage it causes is “now unstoppable” and has already been lost.
According to Euronews on the 5th (local time), the United Kingdom and at least eight European Union (EU) countries had their warmest first January yet. Eight European countries, including the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania, Denmark, Latvia and Liechtenstein recorded record temperatures on the first day of the new year. Budapest, Hungary recorded 18.9 degrees Celsius and England also had its highest temperature on record that day, registering 16.3 degrees on Jan. 1.
According to Reuters, the warm weather continued after that, with temperatures in southwest France climbing to 25 degrees Celsius and in Bilbao, Spain registering 25.1 degrees. Citizens sat and sunbathed outside the Guggenheim Museum on the outskirts of Bilbao.
Even the United States is baffled by the high temperatures. According to the Washington Post (WP) on the 5th, a blizzard raged in many parts of the United States just around Christmas, but now many parts of the South and New England are showing above-average temperatures. New York’s Central Park had about 19 degrees on the 4th.
Warm winters are taking a toll on the ski industry in Europe, and some ski resorts in the US are also suffering. Georgia, the top producer of peaches, is concerned about the heat. A certain amount of cold is needed to form flower buds and produce strong fruit in the fall, but the cold winter has disappeared this year. Farmers worried that peaches after a warm winter would be small and unsightly.
A warm winter in early January is part of the climate change that has occurred in recent years. The British Meteorological Office said on the 4th that 2022 was the hottest year in history, with average temperatures exceeding 10 degrees for the first time on record. What meteorologists describe as an “extraordinary moment in the history of climatology”, recording an average of 10 degrees Celsius in the natural climate (a climate in a non-industrialized state) occurs about once every 500 years, while in the current climate it has been 3 a 5 degrees Celsius It could happen once every four years, and by the end of this century, a further 2.7 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature would mean an average of 10 degrees a year.
France, which has a warmer climate than Britain, also announced last November that 2022 was the warmest year on record since observations began in 1900. Last year’s (provisional) average temperature ranged from between 14.2 and 14.6 degrees Celsius, surpassing the previous record of 14 degrees set in 2020. In the case of Germany, last year’s average temperature was 10.5 degrees, equal to the previous record for the warmest high.
British Met Office senior meteorologist Alex Birkil told The Guardian that the weather this winter was “unprecedented extreme heat”, explaining that “a warm air mass has formed over the west coast of Africa and moved across Europe”. “The air has cleared and January temperatures have broken records across Germany, as well as Denmark and the Czech Republic,” Burkil said.
But another meteorologist, Scott Duncan, said even accounting for unusual ocean temperatures off the west coast of Africa didn’t seem to explain the surprising rise in temperature.
Many scientists have yet to undertake a detailed analysis to determine the reason for this year’s warm winter. However, this warmth is also thought to fit the long-term temperature increase trend caused by human-caused climate change.
“What is happening now is exactly what climate scientists warned about 10 or 20 years ago, and now there is no stopping it,” said Karsten Smid, meteorological expert at Greenpeace Germany.
(Seoul = News 1)
