Does anyone know what the hottest temperature recorded / location is
in Europe?

GFS is forecasting 42c / 43c for South East Europe around 27June.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsavneur.html

I know it's a long way off, and we should never trust models that far
out, but I'm still interested to know.

Here's the correct link.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn38417.png

"Bonos Ego" wrote in message
oups.com...
Does anyone know what the hottest temperature recorded / location is
in Europe?

GFS is forecasting 42c / 43c for South East Europe around 27June.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsavneur.html

I know it's a long way off, and we should never trust models that far
out, but I'm still interested to know.

Southern Spain appears to be the hottest region in Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremes_on_Earth

With a max of 50.0C exactly!

It's interesting though that with all this talk of Global Warmimg,
all those high temperature records are decades old, some
over a century old!
Over-exposure of thermometers perhaps?
--
Col

Bolton, Lancashire
160m asl

Thanks Col,

I just found this article, apparently it reached 47.3c in Portugal
during the heatwave of 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

On 11 Jun, 19:42, Bonos Ego wrote:
Does anyone know what the hottest temperature recorded / location is
in Europe?

GFS is forecasting 42c / 43c for South East Europe around 27June.

Riodades (Alto Doura) in central/north Portugal apparently measured
the highest temperature in Europe at 50.6°C (Christopher Burt, Extreme
Weather, Norton 2004, p 26 - no, he is no relation, that I know of
anyway :-) ), but I don't know how accurate the figure is nor the date
when it was recorded. Much of the other information in his book is
pretty reliable though, more so for the US rather than ROW it has to
be said. Can anyone else can shed light on this statistic?

I'm surprised at comments that records made 100 years ago are less
accurate than those made today. Provided they were made with
calibrated thermometers in some reasonable ventilated shelter such as
a Stevenson screen, and in a reasonably open exposure, there's
absolutely no reason why they should not be comparable with today's
extremes. In the UK, we've seen recorded extremes rise from a little
over 36°C in the July 1868 heatwave to 38.1°C in August 2003; after
making allowance for different types of screens in use prior to the
beginning of the 20th century the records from heatwaves (and cold
waves, remember them) of 100 years or more stand good comparison with
today's values.

Stephen
Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire

"Stephen Burt" wrote in message
ups.com...
On 11 Jun, 19:42, Bonos Ego wrote:


I'm surprised at comments that records made 100 years ago are less
accurate than those made today. Provided they were made with
calibrated thermometers in some reasonable ventilated shelter such as
a Stevenson screen, and in a reasonably open exposure, there's
absolutely no reason why they should not be comparable with today's
extremes. In the UK, we've seen recorded extremes rise from a little
over 36°C in the July 1868 heatwave to 38.1°C in August 2003; after
making allowance for different types of screens in use prior to the
beginning of the 20th century the records from heatwaves (and cold
waves, remember them) of 100 years or more stand good comparison with
today's values.

In the past 100 years or so the average global temperature has risen
by about 0.75C. And yet the absolute temperature records for each
continent haven't changed much. Doesn't this seem a little odd?
Surely if average global temperatures are rising then the absolute
records should be rising by the same degree?
--
Col

Bolton, Lancashire
160m asl

On 11 Jun, 20:40, "Col" wrote:

In the past 100 years or so the average global temperature has risen
by about 0.75C. And yet the absolute temperature records for each
continent haven't changed much. Doesn't this seem a little odd?
Surely if average global temperatures are rising then the absolute
records should be rising by the same degree?

Not necessarily: surely conditions on a hot day in 1907 will be much
the same as in 2007 - solar radiation input, advection of hot air, dry
ground conditions - and the resultant maximum temperature will be
pretty similar? There is a great deal of similarity in the
distribution and extent of the heatwaves in July in 1868 and 1881 with
2006, for example.

Where things may have changed in recent years are the persistence of
long spells of hot weather - look at Europe in summer 2003, for
example, where temperatures were high for 3-4 months, and the
persistent advection of warm air from such blocked anticyclonic
conditions together with high sea temperatures reducing possible
cooling effects made a high temperature extreme that summer that much
more likely to occur given the right conditions.

I'm talking here of the British Isles, obviously, but it's difficult
to me to see how temperature extremes in say the Mediterranean or the
Sahara will jump in a quantum fashion without any real change in the
basic meteorological conditions. What is much more likely under
expected climate change model scenarios is that any given temperature
value, whether 35°C in southern England or 45°C in Seville, will
change frequency from a 1-in-50 year event to a 1-in-5 year event, or
even 1-in-2. But that in itself does not mean that the absolute
extremes will climb rapidly decade after decade. As I referenced
above, we've seen UK extremes on the period of reliable historical
records rise by about 2 degC between 1868 and 2003 - actually faster
than the rate of mean temperature rise - but while I would not bet on
it taking another 135 years before 40°C is reached, neither would I
place any money on say 42°C being attained in the UK in any of our
lifetimes.

Stephen Burt
Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire.

"Stephen Burt" wrote :
On 11 Jun, 19:42, Bonos Ego wrote:

Does anyone know what the hottest temperature recorded / location is
in Europe?

GFS is forecasting 42c / 43c for South East Europe around 27June.

Riodades (Alto Doura) in central/north Portugal apparently measured
the highest temperature in Europe at 50.6°C (Christopher Burt, Extreme
Weather, Norton 2004, p 26 - no, he is no relation, that I know of
anyway :-) ), but I don't know how accurate the figure is nor the date
when it was recorded. Much of the other information in his book is
pretty reliable though, more so for the US rather than ROW it has to
be said. Can anyone else can shed light on this statistic?

I've been researching this for most of today; having quoted the
Riodades figure from time to time over many years I now have
to say that I have been guilty of quoting this figure without having
done any basic research. Observed as 50.5°C by the way ....
presumably converted to 123°F for the American market, and
then converted back to 50.6°C.

I came across it in the 1970s in the massive multi-volume
"World Survey of Climatology" under the Chief Editorship of
H.E.Landsberg, of which Volume 5, "Climates of Northern
and Western Europe" was edited by another huge name
in 20C climatology, C.C.Wallén. (Gordon Manley wrote
the chapter on the British Isles). That's my excuse ... such big
names, why should I question anything in it? Well, I might
have thought that when I was in my early-20s; my philosophy
is now: Question Everything.

The chapter titled "The Climate of the Iberian Peninsula" is
by the notable Spanish climatologist A.Linés Escardó, and
all he says on this subject is this:

"The highest temperatures in the peninsula (50.5°C) have
been recorded at Riodades (Alto Douro, Portugal)." No
information about date, observer, instruments, or anything
else.

What I've come up with today is that Riodades is a small
commune of some 600 inhabitants in the hill country
(c.700m above sea level) just south of the River Douro,
roughly half way between Oporto and the Spanish border.
There is no observatory, military activity, agricultural
college, or anything that would suggest this might be the
location of a climatological station. It is conceivable that
it may be the wrong location, and the alleged record
temperature has sometimes been attributed to "Los
Riodades", but the only Google hits on that bring up
the temperature record. The village of Riodades has never,
as far as I can discover, been called Los Riodades.

The temperature was recorded on 4th August 1881 -
a summer of widespread extreme temperatures over
both Europe (including the British Isles) and North
America. Stevenson screens were in short supply even
in the UK, and the major observatories at Madrid
and Lisbon sheltered their thermometers on Glaisher
stands, so that is probably the very best exposure that
the Riodades thermometer had (probably it was worse).

I haven't found any reference in Symons's Met Mag or
the Quarterly Journal of the RMS between 1881 and 1883
to this particular observation. To me, it seems
insupportably high, and probably belongs in the trash
can along with Faversham and El Aziziya.

To answer the OP's question, and with the proviso that
I haven't researched it, it seems that the prime candidate
for the European record holder is Catenanuova, on Sicily,
(about 30km SW of Etna!) recorded on 10th August 1999.
It was certainly a very hot day on Sicily with 42°C at both
Catania and Palermo.

If we have any Portuguese readers here, a spot of
research on the observer and instruments at Riodades
in 1881 would be extremely welcome.

Philip

Many thanks to everyone that has contributed to this thread, which all
started because I was looking at at GFS chart for 27th June predicted
high temperatures for SE Europe of circa 42c / 43c.

Guess what, GFS has now knocked it back to a much more resonable
figure of 33c for the same region.

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/Rtavn36017.png

"Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote:
To answer the OP's question, and with the proviso that
I haven't researched it, it seems that the prime candidate
for the European record holder is Catenanuova, on Sicily,
(about 30km SW of Etna!) recorded on 10th August 1999.
It was certainly a very hot day on Sicily with 42°C at both
Catania and Palermo.

I omitted to add that Catenanuova's max temp on that
day was 48.5°C.

Philip