Prof Liz Bentley, Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, reflects on a busy summer when weather and climate featured heavily in the media.
The UK and central Europe experienced a number of intense heatwaves this summer, with all-time records being broken in many places.
Across Europe the heat began to build at the start of summer, and by the last week of June local temperature records were being broken. France recorded an all-time record high temperature of 46 °C on 28th June during a 9 day heatwave.
An extreme heatwave that has been affecting large parts of Europe this month continues to intensify, as exceptionally hot air is drawn up from North Africa.
Heatwaves do not only occur on land, but also inside the ocean. Marine heatwaves are defined as periods of prolonged anomalously high sea surface temperatures compared to the local 30-year long record. Although the occurrence of these events has been observed locally, researchers in recent years looked at this phenomenon at the global scale.
Sixty-two people have died and more than 54 injured in one of Portugal’s deadliest forest fires. Many of those who lost their life were trapped in cars as they tried to flee the central forested region of Pedrógão Grande, and it is feared the death toll may rise further.
It is thought that the blaze, which is raging in several parts of a mountainous area 200km northeast of Lisbon, may have been sparked by a lightning strike hitting a tree during a rainless thunderstorm on the night of 17th-18th June 2017, following an intense heatwave which saw temperatures exceeding 40degC.
Temperatures are expected to climb into the mid-30°C's next week and while this is very hot weather for the UK, it's not technically a heatwave as theWeather Club explains.
Here in the UK, there is no official definition of a 'heatwave'. Instead, the definition comes from the World Meteorological Organisation who define a heatwave as "when the daily maximum temperature exceeds the average by 5°C for more than five consecutive days."
Photo: Water shortages caused fields to dry up, siginificantly reducing yields that year.Source: Deposit Photos
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1976 drought; the driest 16-month period in over 200 years across the UK and one of the most severe droughts on record.
