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Austria sets heat record with 30C recorded in early April

A town in southern Austria Sunday became the country's first locality to hit a temperature of 30C this early in the year, the national weather service said.

Published: 8 April 2024 10:19 CEST
Austria sets heat record with 30C recorded in early April
Tourists walk by a statue of Emperor Franz Josef at the Hofburg Palace during a hot sunny day in Vienna. (Photo by ALEXANDER KLEIN / AFP)

The announcement by Austria’s federal Institute for Geology, Geophysics, Meteorology and Climatology came as countries around the world have seen ever more extreme weather, which experts attribute to global warming.

A measuring station in the town of Bruck an der Mur in Austria’s southeastern province of Styria registered precisely 30.0C, marking the Alpine nation’s earliest ever recorded “heat day”, the institute said in a statement.

The national weather service defines a “heat day” as mercury levels touching at least 30C. Sunday’s record surpassed by ten days the previous one set on 17 April 1934 in Salzburg.

Temperatures in other European countries have also been unseasonably warm since the start of April, with Crete in Greece reaching 31C earlier this week.

Experts warn that global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions makes extreme weather more likely.

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WEATHER

IN PICTURES: ‘Exceptional’ Sahara dust cloud hits Europe

An "exceptional" dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent's climate monitor said on Monday, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime.

Published: 8 April 2024 14:15 CEST
IN PICTURES: 'Exceptional' Sahara dust cloud hits Europe

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said the latest plume, the third of its kind in recent weeks, was bringing hazy conditions to southern Europe and would sweep northward as far as Scandinavia.

Mark Parrington, senior scientist at Copernicus, said the latest event was related to a weather pattern that has brought warmer weather to parts of Europe in recent days.

“While it is not unusual for Saharan dust plumes to reach Europe, there has been an increase in the intensity and frequency of such episodes in recent years, which could be potentially attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns,” he said.

This latest episode has caused air quality to deteriorate in several countries, Copernicus said.

The European Union’s safe threshold for concentrations of PM10 — coarser particles like sand and dust that that can irritate the nose and throat — has already been exceeded in some locations.

A picture taken on April 8, 2024 shows a rapeseed field under thick sand dust blown in from the Sahara, giving the sky a yellowish appearance near Daillens, western Switzerland. – An “exceptional” dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent’s climate monitor said, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

The worst affected was the Iberian Peninsula in Spain but lesser air pollution spikes were also recorded in parts of Switzerland, France and Germany.

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Local authorities in southeastern and southern France announced that the air pollution threshold was breached on Saturday.

They advised residents to avoid intense physical activity, particularly those with heart or respiratory problems.

The dust outbreak was expected to reach Sweden, Finland and northwest Russia before ending on Tuesday with a shift in weather patterns, Copernicus said.

The Sahara emits between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust every year, which can travel thousands of kilometres (miles), carried by winds and certain meteorological conditions.

The Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa saw just 12 days within a 90-day period from December to February where skies were free of Saharan dust, the local weather agency Aemet had reported.

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