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Record-Setting 2021 European Weather Preconditioned By Climate Change

 Europe

FILE - Women cool themselves with fans in the Rastro flea market during a heatwave in Madrid, Spain, Aug. 15, 2021. Scientists say last summer was the hottest summer on record in Europe, with temperatures a 1.8 Fahrenheit higher than the average for the previous three decades. A report released Friday, April 22, 2022 by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service found that while spring 2021 was cooler than average, the summer months were marked by “severe and long-lasting heatwaves.” (Credit: AP Photo/Andrea Comas, file)

Europe's catastrophic floods and devastating wildfires last year coincided with its hottest summer on record, according to the fifth European State of the Climate report, published Friday. Average temperatures in the continent are a full 2°C (3.6°F) higher than preindustrial averages, the report said, and summer 2021 was a full 1°C (1.8°F) hotter than the average summer from the previous 30 years. It was the hottest European summer on record, as an August heatwave in Sicily broke records at 48.8°C (119.8° F). "With the changing climate, temperatures are getting warmer and warmer in the Mediterranean region, so it's not unexpected to get these even higher temperatures," Freja Vamborg, a Copernicus senior scientist, who led and edited the report, told CNN. "There is preconditioning due to climate change."

(CNN, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg $; Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves, Flooding, Wildfires)

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