Satellites watch Europe get hit by most severe winter heatwave ever

Europe entered 2023 with what meteorologists described as probably the most intense winter heatwave in historical past. 

Overlook about ice-covered lakes and landscapes blanketed in snow. New 12 months’s Day 2023 in lots of central European international locations was about T-shirt climate with temperature data falling like bowling pins all around the continent. 

And whereas many might have loved the sudden respite from freezing chilly, climate change consultants have sounded alarm bells. 

Associated: 10 devastating signs of climate change satellites can see from space 

In a picture taken on Jan. 1, Europe’s Sentinel-2 satellite captured the city of Altdorf within the Swiss Alps the place temperatures on this a part of the yr normally common between 28 and 39 levels Fahrenheit (minus 2 and plus 4 levels Celsius). The New 12 months’s Day of 2023, nonetheless, noticed daytime temperatures soar to 67 levels F (19.2 levels C) with even the night time remaining at a balmy 60 levels F (16 levels C). Related extremes have been recorded in lots of different international locations throughout central and northwestern Europe together with Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic. 

Local weather scientists and meteorologists from all around the world flocked to Twitter to specific their astonishment on the unseasonal heatwave. 

“I’ve by no means seen a forecast like this. Ever,” NASA local weather scientist Ryan Stauffer tweeted (opens in new tab) with a purple-colored picture visualizing the “temperature anomaly” throughout Europe. “The local weather implications are arduous to disregard,” he added additional down the thread. 

Physicist Nahel Belgherze who works on the European Synchrotron analysis facility within the French Alps shared an animation exhibiting a map of Europe with dozens of colourful dots arising throughout representing temperature data damaged throughout the continent between Dec. 30 and Jan. 1. 

“One of the vital extreme winter heatwaves in Europe’s trendy historical past visualized during the last 2 days,” Belgherze said in the tweet (opens in new tab). “A whole bunch of month-to-month heat temperature data have been damaged all around the continent. That is precisely the sort of very irregular occasion that’s progressively rewriting world climatology.”

For locations like Altdorf, such occasions have explicit significance. The city, one in all many in Switzerland in addition to in different international locations that share chunks of Europe’s best mountain vary, is nestled between snow-capped mountains over 9,800 toes tall (3,000 meters). The Sentinel-2 picture reveals largely inexperienced, grass-covered panorama with snow protecting solely the higher-altitude areas, a view disturbing to local weather consultants who had beforehand noticed regarding record-breaking glacier loss attributable to the new summer season of 2022. 

In line with The Conversation (opens in new tab), 6.2% of the mountain glacier mass within the Swiss Alps melted away that summer season. Now the winter season, which normally supplies these ice sheets with an annual increase and respite, is witnessing their destruction too. Beforehand, scientists would contemplate a 2% annual ice loss as extreme. 

According to Reuters (opens in new tab), the Alps are warming by 0.5 diploma F (0.3 diploma C) per decade, which is about twice as quick as the worldwide common. Situations primarily based on present greenhouse fuel emissions projections foresee that as much as 80% of the Alpine glaciers might disappear by the top of this century.

Comply with Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.