EU data shows last year was the hottest on record for Europe

In last year’s heatwave, temperatures in Europe reached as high as 39-40 degrees celsius. It’s now been confirmed that 2019 was the hottest recorded in the continent since records began, with record high temperatures seen in numerous EU countries.

According to data released by the climate monitor, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures were slightly lower than 2016; however, the period of 2010-2019 was the hottest since these records started to be collected.

Last summer, Europe faced an extreme heatwave in July. In Paris, temperatures hit a record 41 degrees, and other countries including the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium all recorded record levels of heat during the summer months.

Carlo Buontempo, head of C3S, said, “2019 has been another exceptionally warm year, in fact the second warmest globally in our dataset, with many of the individual months breaking records.”

Many climate experts believe this could be the new normal, and have warned that carbon concentration in the atmosphere is continuing to rise. In 2019, these levels also reached the highest on record, and the highest they have been in around 800,000 years.

Warnings have been issued by scientists that if this continues, we could face more climate-related disasters, like the recent fires seen in Australia, Siberia and the Amazon, or flooding in Indonesia that’s killed dozens of people.

According to the UN, in order to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees in the coming years, as negotiated in the Paris Agreement, man-made greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by at least 7.6% each year between now and 2030.

“The past five years have been the warmest on record; the last decade has been the warmest on record,” said Copernicus director Jean-Noel Thepaut. He added, “These are unquestionably alarming signs.”

Assessments show that the areas most affected by warming are the Arctic, Alaska, Eastern and Southern Europe, and Australia. Assessments show that short-term heat will continue in the coming years, and so will long-term warming

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