Until now, you can count the number of bathing days in Austria on one hand. In the eastern half of the country in particular, there have been repeated heavy rains and thunderstorms in recent days, flooding basements and underpasses and keeping many fire brigades on edge. Hail insurance has reported agricultural damage in the millions.
Rainfall records have been broken at some GeoSphere Austria weather stations, for example in Wels/Schleißheim (Upper Austria), Bad Radkersburg (Styria) and Bruckneudorf (Burgenland). In Wels, a storm earlier in the week spilled 125 liters per square meter, which is a new daily high. Most of the rain fell in just two hours, which has never happened here before.
Climate
it remains impermanent
Heavy rain as a sign of climate crisis
Increased heavy rainfall is a feature of the climate crisis, as warmer air absorbs more water vapor and rain can be more productive. Northern Burgenland can also sing a song about it. The region around Bruckneudorf and Parndorf has recently been hit by heavy rain several times. More than 190 liters of rain per square meter fell this week, making June the wettest month here since measurements began more than 80 years ago.
Lake Neusiedl benefited from the rain and recovered somewhat, starting the summer just above last year’s record low. The lake has risen more than 25 centimeters since April. With a current water level of 115.25cm above the Adriatic Sea, there is still a 30cm gap to the average water level at this time of year.
30 degrees as late as rarely
Austria has so far been spared the heat. From temperatures of 30 degrees, meteorologists speak of a hot day. This limit has not yet been reached or exceeded this year. 29.2 degrees in Ferlach and Vienna are the highest values so far. But there were some summer days, Innsbruck is the place with the most with 17 days above 25 degrees.
ORF/Georg Hummer There have already been a few days of summer in Vienna this year – but the weather is and will remain unstable
No suitable weather conditions have set in yet, no stable high-pressure climate that would allow the southern heat to reach us. And even in the Mediterranean region, the last few weeks have been anything but steady and warm. Rome has only had one day with 30 degrees this year. On the other hand, it has been raining frequently in Italy and the acute drought is over.
On average, it is warm for the first time in Austria in mid-May, this date has been postponed in recent decades due to man-made global warming. Last year the time for the 11th of May had already arrived in Innsbruck, in 2018 the thermometer in Salzburg already marked 30 degrees on the 20th of April. It is already clear that the first hot day in Austria in over 30 years did not take long.
Copernicus predicts hot summer
Elsewhere in Europe it got hot for the first time this week. More than 30 degrees were measured in Poland on Wednesday, in Germany on Thursday for the first time this year, in the Netherlands, Belgium and the French capital Paris on Friday. However, the heat is still pushing Austria away, next week temperatures will drop slightly before rising again the following week. Incidentally, in 1989, it wasn’t until July 2 in Austria that it warmed up for the first time.
Conclusions or trends about the course of the summer cannot be derived from the cautious and rather bumpy start. Instead, seasonal forecasts from climate models show an above-average summer. The latest forecast from the European Climate Change Service Copernicus (C3S), released on Saturday, calculates above-average temperatures for most of Europe.
COPERNICUS Temperature predicted by EU climate change service Copernicus from July to September: much warmer than normal almost everywhere
Thus, the months of July, August and September are expected to be one to two degrees warmer in large parts of the continent than the average for the years 1993 to 2016. Significantly higher than normal temperatures are also expected in Austria . Last year’s summer in Europe was the hottest on record, resulting in severe drought, many wildfires and low river levels. Glaciers in the Alps lost more than five cubic kilometers of ice and the World Health Organization (WHO) said at least 15,000 additional deaths were due to the heat.
More rain in the south, less in the north
It is not yet possible to estimate what consequences this summer may have. In terms of precipitation, models show more rain than normal in the coming months from Spain to Italy and the Balkans, and according to Copernicus’ predictions, it would also continue to be wetter in Austria. In contrast, less precipitation than normal is expected in the North and Baltic seas.
This weather pattern has already established itself in recent weeks. As a result, eastern Germany is already being hit by a severe drought and it hasn’t rained heavily in Berlin for a month. There is currently a high risk of forest fires in Poland and Lithuania, and drought is also threatening crops here.
COPERNICUS Precipitation forecast by EU Copernicus climate change service for July to September: more rain than usual, especially in southern Europe
It’s hard to say exactly what the summer will be like, and seasonal forecasts should be treated with some caution. After all, they reflect an average value over a long period of time or a deviation from it, and do not calculate the specific weather conditions of individual days. But a look at statistics and the weather trend also shows that anything but a hot summer would be a surprise.
extreme weather
While individual extreme events cannot be directly attributed to a specific cause, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is clear that extreme weather events such as floods, storms and heat are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of the climate crisis. . .
Previous records are now average
Summers in Austria have been getting hotter and hotter since the 1990s, and this trend has increased since the turn of the millennium. The last ten summers in Austria have been almost three degrees warmer than in the 1970s.
Austria’s hottest summers have been in the recent past: 2003 and 2019 are in first place, 2015 is in third place, and the summer of 2022 is in fourth place. The number of hot days above 30 degrees per year has doubled or tripled in recent decades. What used to be a record is now average.