Entering 2023, Europe is being hit by the most severe winter heatwave in history. This raises concerns for meterologists.
Forget about ice-covered lakes and snow-covered landscapes. Quoted from Space.com, New Year 2023 in many Central European countries experienced anomalous temperatures.
In this image taken on Jan. 1, Europe's Sentinel-2 satellite captures the town of Altdorf in the Swiss Alps where temperatures usually average between 28 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 to +4 degrees Celsius). However, New Year 2023, daytime temperatures soared to 67 degrees F (19.2 degrees C) even at night remaining at a balmy 60 degrees F (16 degrees C).
This change clearly has a big impact on Altdorf considering this city is one of the Swiss regions that has snow-capped mountains up to more than 3,000 meters. Sentinel-2's image shows a mostly green, grass-covered landscape with snow only covering the upland areas.
Similar extreme changes were recorded in many other countries in central and northwestern Europe including Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic. The change has climate scientists and meteorologists from around the world flocking to Twitter to express their astonishment at the unseasonable heatwave.
"I've never seen a forecast like this. Ever," tweeted NASA climate scientist Ryan Stauffer(opens in a new tab)with a purple image visualizing a "temperature anomaly" across Europe. "The climate implications are hard to ignore," he added further down the thread.
I have never seen a forecast like this. ever. pic.twitter.com/j2aFjayiGA
— Ryan Stauffer (@ryans_wx) December 30, 2022
Physicist Nahel Belgherze who works at the European Synchrotron research facility in the French Alps has shared an animation showing a map of Europe with dozens of colorful dots popping up everywhere representing temperature records broken across the continent between December 30 and January 1.
"One of the most severe winter heat waves in modern European history visualized over the last 2 days," Belgherze said in the tweet. "Hundreds of monthly warm temperature records are being broken across continents. This is exactly the kind of highly abnormal event that is progressively rewriting global climatology."
One of the most severe winter heatwave in Europe's modern history visualized over the last 2 days. Hundreds of monthly warm temperature records were broken all over the continent. This is exactly the kind of very abnormal event that is progressively rewriting global climatology. pic.twitter.com/Nb8ImytqYC
— Nahel Belgherze (@WxNB_) January 1, 2023
The presence of the worst winter heatwave in history has added to the minds of climatologists. Previously they had observed about the record-breaking loss of glaciers caused by the summer of 2022.
According to The Conversation, 6.2% of the mass of mountain glaciers in the Swiss Alps melted in the summer of 2022. Now it's the winter season that normally gives permafrost a patch of melting instead. Previously, scientists would have considered a 2% annual loss of ice to be severe.
Meanwhile Reuters reports the Alps are warming 0.5 degrees F (0.3 degrees C) per decade, which is roughly twice as fast as the global average. Scenarios based on current greenhouse gas emission projections predict that up to 80% of Alpine glaciers will be gone by the end of the century.