Updated on 12/28/2022 at 2:50 pm
- According to forecasts, New Year’s Eve and Day will be extremely mild.
- Maximums reach 18 degrees and could break last year’s record.
Austria could experience the hottest turn of the year. Similar to the previous year, New Year’s Eve and Day should be extremely mild. Maximum values should be between ten and 18 degrees. “It can only get colder with permanent fog, with maximum values around six degrees”, said Sabrina Marth, from the Central Institute of Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG), on Wednesday. These are the highest values in the range of records, both of which are from the previous year.
Mix of sun, clouds, fog and temperatures in the positive range
The highest temperature on New Year’s Eve was 18.3 degrees in Berndorf, Lower Austria on December 31, 2021. The next day, a new record for New Year’s Day was set at 18.8 degrees on January 1, 2022 in Köflach in Styria.
On Saturday (December 31) it will be quite sunny in most parts of Austria, with some thick clouds in between. Heavy fog is possible, especially in Lower Carinthia. New Year’s Eve passes without rain and snow, and it is not very cold. Midnight temperatures in most parts of Austria are between five and ten degrees. It is more likely to be slightly chilled in wind-sheltered, cloudless alpine valleys. After minus three and about plus ten degrees, afternoon temperatures usually rise to between five and 18 degrees.
On New Year’s Day, Sunday, fog fields in the lowlands are more frequent than the day before and can persist in southern and eastern locations until midday. In most parts of Austria it will be quite sunny again. According to the current ZAMG forecast for Wednesday morning, initial temperatures range from minus three to over ten degrees, daily maximums depending on fog or sunshine are around four to 17 degrees.
Experts point to effects of climate change
For the Christmas forecast, ZAMG expert Alexander Orlik pointed out the effects of global warming on the holiday climate in Austria. “Of course there are big fluctuations from year to year, but in the long term the trend of increasingly milder temperatures in Natal is clearly recognizable”, said Orlik and a comparison of the period from 1961 to 1990 with that of 1991 to 2020 in the province capitals of Austria shows a warming of up to two and a half degrees.
If you compare the ten-year December average values from the Hohe Warte measuring station in Vienna, with the exception of one outlier in 2012, they are 1.1 degrees, well above the 1961-1990 average of 1.3 degrees. The years 2014 (average value: 4.1 degrees), 2015 (4.6) and 2019 (4.0) even exceed these values by more than two and a half degrees. According to science, a clear – and noticeable – impact of the climate crisis.
The deviations are even more drastic if you take the respective daily average across Austria for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day over the past ten years. In addition to the two record values from the previous year, the assessment of the average daily air temperature for December 31, 2021 showed a deviation of 9.8 degrees from the average from 1961 to 1990, January 1 was only slightly behind in 9.6 degrees more.
With two exceptions, this decade’s two values are also above average, but by far not to the extreme extent of 2021/22. But since 2021, every New Year’s Day except 2014 has been above average, five in ten again above 2.5 degrees – on New Year’s Day eight in ten have been above that and also five above 2.5 degrees. Comparing the decade from 2002 to 2011 shows that four New Year’s Eve and five New Year’s Eve days were below the average, from 1992 to 2001 there were six or seven with negative deviations from the average from 1961 to 1990. © APA