June brought the first heat wave of 2023, with a high of 36.2 degrees on June 22nd in Bad Goisern (Upper Austria), and it was hotter than average most of the time. For the most part, the month was also very dry, Geosphere Austria (formerly ZAMG) reported on Friday. “In the preliminary assessment, June 2023 in the lowlands of Austria is 1.1 degrees above the average for the climate period from 1991 to 2020, in the mountains by 1.3 degrees,” said climatologist Alexander Orlik.
That works out to be ninth in the lowlands in the hottest June series in the 257-year history of measurements. In the mountains, the month ranks eighth in the 173-year series of mountain measurements. Compared to the climate period from 1961 to 1990, which was not as affected by global warming, June 2023 was 2.9 degrees above average in the lowlands and 3.2 degrees in the mountains.
Regionally, the balance is very different: “In June, slightly cooler air from northern Europe occasionally flowed eastwards from Austria. Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Salzburg, on the other hand, were often in the subtropics,” explained Orlik. In Bregenz (measured since 1869) it was 2.9 degrees warmer compared to the average from 1991 to 2020. This makes the third hottest June in measurement history. In Feldkirch (measured since 1875) it was the fifth warmest June on record with a deviation of 2.6 degrees.
At the Vienna Hohe Warte weather station (measured since 1775), on the other hand, the temperature was just 0.3 degrees above the 1991-2020 average. measurement.
In some places, heavy storms brought large amounts of rain in a short amount of time. But for the whole month it was very dry in most parts of Austria. There was average to slightly above average precipitation from Carinthia through southern Styria, Burgenland and Vienna as far east as Weinviertel.
“In the assessment of the whole of Austria, the amount of precipitation in June 2023 is 28% below the long-term average,” said Orlik. “It was one of the least precipitated June 25s in the last 166 years.”