Recent data suggests that Europe is warming at a rate faster than the global average as last year was the hottest on record.
Around the world, 2019 was the second hottest on record however multiple heatwaves across Europe pushed the air to hotter temperatures.
In the last five years, on average, the global temperatures were just over 1 degree Celsius warmer than those at the end of the 1800s. Over the same period, Europe has seen temperatures rise by nearly 2 degrees Celsius. The data has been published as Earth Day reaches its half century anniversary.
The World Meteorological Organization has said that the impacts of climate change and the physical signs that come with it have sped up in the last five years, which were the five hottest years on record.
The European data which is provided by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Service shows that 11 out of the 12 hottest years on record in Europe have took place since 2000.
The report from the European State of the Climate in 2019 has shown that the summertime heatwaves and warm weather led to droughts in many places within Europe.
During this time, Britain saw its new all-time high temperature recorded of 38.7 degrees Celsius in Cambridge whilst temperatures remained 3-4 degrees Celsius warmer across the whole of Europe.
The warm temperatures correlate with the increased amount of sunshine that hit Europe over 2019. The number of sunshine hours across Europe was also another record.
The hot summer over Europe was then followed by some of the wettest autumn and winter months. November saw nearly four times the amount of normal average rainfall across many regions in southern and western Europe.
On the other hand, the European Arctic region was below the record temperatures from years previous with the temperature being just 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than normal.
However, all of the data does show that there is a clear trend in the temperature rising over the last 40 years or so and that Europe’s temperature is rising at a rate significantly quicker than the average for the rest of the world stated Professor Rowan Sutton, director of science from the UKs National Centre for Atmospheric Science.
Sutton believes the two main reasons for this is because land regions warm considerably faster than oceans, as the moisture over a body of water slows the rate of warming. Secondly due to decreases in certain forms of air pollution it has led to increased warming, especially during summer months.
The main statistic that is going to worry scientists is that average mean temperatures across Europe have been almost 2 degrees Celsius warmer than at the end of the 19th Century. This means that the continent is going to struggle massively to keep temperatures well below a 2 degree Celsius increase as agreed in the Paris Climate agreement.
The ongoing lockdown due to Covid-19 has led to a decrease in greenhouse gases and emissions however experts in the field are keen to get across the point that this is only temporary and that much more will need to be done to stop this worrying trend escalating.
Scientists believe that it is essential to carry on tackling climate change even during the coronavirus pandemic to try and make sure that any further temperature rises are restricted.