A record high winter temperature hits parts of Europe during the New Year. This weather anomaly has led environmental activists to call for faster action on climate change.
A number of regions in Europe have recorded temperature records in recent days, from Switzerland, Poland to Hungary. These areas recorded their warmest Christmas Eve and saw temperatures rise to 18.9 degrees Celsius on January 1.
In France, the night of December 30-31 was the warmest since records began, temperatures rising to nearly 25 degrees Celsius in the southwest in the New Year. A number of Europe's normally bustling ski resorts have been deserted due to a lack of snow.
Meanwhile, the weather agency in Germany announced the temperature was recorded as over 20 degrees Celsius. They said they had never seen a New Year with such mild cold weather before.
Czech Television reported that some trees appeared to be starting to flower, while the Swiss Meteorology and Climatology Agency issued a pollen warning for people with hazel plant allergies because they bloom earlier than usual.
In Basque, Spain, the temperature reaches 25.1 degrees Celsius. Views of people basking in the sun can be found outside Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum or along the Nervion River.
"It always rains here, it's very cold, and it's January, (but now) it feels like summer," said one Bilbao resident, as quoted by Reuters.
"It looks like great weather for cycling. But on the other hand we know it's an unusually warm planetary condition. So we're enjoying it, but worried at the same time," said French tourist Joana Host.
Climate change
Scientists have yet to analyze specifically how climate change affects recent weather and high temperature anomalies. But the warm weather in January is in line with the long-term trend of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.
"Winters are getting warmer in Europe as a result of increasing global temperatures," said Freja Vamborg, climate scientist at the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
This event is still related to extreme weather in 2022 which scientists conclude is directly related to global warming, including deadly heat waves in Europe and India, and flooding in Pakistan.
"The record-breaking heat across Europe over New Years was all the more likely to be due to human-caused climate change, just as climate change is now making every heatwave more likely and hotter," said Dr Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London. .
Surges in temperature can also cause plants to start growing earlier in the year or coax animals out of hibernation earlier, leaving them vulnerable to being killed off by the cold later.
Robert Vautard, director of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, said that although temperatures peaked from December 30 to January 2, winter has lasted two weeks and is still not over. "This is actually a relatively long-lived event," he said.
France's national weather agency, Meteo France, attributed the abnormal temperature to a warm air mass moving toward Europe from the subtropical zone.
It happened during the normally busy winter season, causing many trips to be canceled and resorts in the northern Spanish region of Asturias, Leon and Cantabria to close since the Christmas holidays due to lack of snow.
On Jahorina mountain above the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, should be one of the busiest weeks of the Christmas and New Year holiday season. But what happened was the opposite, the tourist spot was deserted.