PLEA Network

28 July 2018, World Weather Attribution Heatwave in northern Europe, summer 2018. The summer of 2018 has been remarkable in northern Europe. A very persistent high-pressure anomaly over Scandinavia caused high temperature anomalies and drought there from May to (at least) July. Southern Europe was unusually wet, with damaging thunderstorms in France in the first half of June. In this analysis we investigate the connection between one aspect, the highest temperatures so far in Northern Europe, and climate change. Aspects other than temperature are much less straightforward to analyse but may be considered in subsequent studies. It is important to note that, compared to other attribution analyses of European summers, attributing a heatwave early in the season with the whole of August still to come will only give a preliminary result of the 2018 Northern hemisphere heatwave season. Here we present an attribution study of the ongoing heat wave made in near real time using well assessed methodologies. It is not peer-reviewed and was written quickly. We used thoroughly tested methods to do the analysis, evaluation of models and checked the observations for errors. The return times are partly based on forecasts and therefore have additional uncertainties. However, the changes in probability are based on past observations and model results, and the authors are confident that these results are robust. We are very grateful to Peter Thorne and Peter Thejll for making the Irish (from Met Eiréann) and Danish (from DMI) temperature observations available to us. Read more here