Temperature anomalies: if you are not interested in the weather, it will be interested in you

July 2023 will be remembered as the hottest month on record, breaking all records. In the Northern Hemisphere, anticyclones with intense thermal domes swept across Asia, North America, northern Africa, and southern Europe. Extreme heat has also visited much of the tropics, especially the Caribbean. In some places, it was observed even in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is now the height of winter.

Why did such a natural anomaly become possible?

July is predominantly considered the hottest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere (however, not everywhere: in Greece, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Turkey and some other places it is August). The natural cyclical warming of the El Ninh Tropical Pacific, as well as man-made climate change, are creating intense, large-scale, long-lasting climate heatwaves. Thus, the peaks of truly unearthly heat were noted at the beginning of the second half of the year on land and above the water surface.



As a result, in many countries, the maximum temperature that fell on the "top of summer" exceeded 50 ° C. So, in the PRC, an unprecedented figure for the country was recorded at 52,2 ° C, in the Middle East - a fantastic 66,7 ° C, which is close to the limit of human survival! Another heat dome raised temperatures in the Mediterranean to a record 28,71°C, while hot and dry weather in the far north sparked wildfires unheard of in Canada.

Far East and Far West

Climatically comparatively temperate China in this sense was especially surprising. In the first ten days of July, continental Linzhou and Jingxin were visited by calm at 43,3 °C. In the middle of the month, after a short pause, an even more massive influx of heat came, as a result of which Hong Kong and Beijing recorded a decade with an average daily temperature of 35 ° C. In Japan, despite the fact that it is surrounded on all sides by the ocean, the picture is almost the same: Tokyo can hardly endure humid 35 ° C for a long period. The surface of the sea especially accumulated heat around the Land of the Rising Sun, resulting in debilitating heat and rainfall that caused deadly floods. A band of superheated water stretches across the North Pacific Ocean.

For 31 consecutive days in Phoenix, Arizona, the average temperature was 43,3 °C, 44 days in El Paso (Texas) 37,8 °C and 46 non-stop days in Miami (Florida) 37,8 °C. It is noteworthy that in the mainland of the United States, an excess of the climatic norm is exclusively recorded everywhere. For example, in Barrow (the northernmost point of Alaska), an average daily temperature of 9,1 ° C was noted, which is 3,4 higher than traditional values. In Key West (the southernmost point of Florida) 30,9 ° C, which is 1,3 higher than usual.

Hell in the south...

When temperatures reached 45,3°C in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, forecasters were sure that the absolute temperature record for the south of Europe had been set. An, no! July 24 on the Italian island of Sardinia was the hottest July day on record in the region. The temperature here was 48,2 °C. This heat has moved out of Africa thanks to the sirocco. Temperatures peaked at 23°C on July 48,7 in Algeria and 49°C in Tunisia, setting the record for the entire time of observation.

A long average daily temperature of 37,2 ° C reigned in Cuba's Guira de Melen, Dominican Barahona and Ecuador's San Miguel, which was the July record for this part of the world.

The critical temperature level in July exceeded 50 °C in Iran, China, Kuwait, Mexico, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. The daytime temperature in the famous California Death Valley stopped at around 53,3 ° C (nearly reaching the highest figure of 56,7 ° C in 1913), but the night temperature at 48,9 ° C became the highest observed hitherto on the planet.

...and in the north

At high latitudes in the Northwest Territories of Canada on July 10, the thermometer showed 37,9 ° C. This is in Norman Well, located north of the 65th parallel, in fact, in the polar region, where permafrost reigns! The homeland of the maple leaf was known mainly as a rainy and damp country with a cool climate. Now there is fire. So, in British Columbia, the fires began on May 12, they are still going on and it is not known when they will end. In this Canadian province alone, no less than one and a half million hectares of virgin taiga have already been destroyed, cases with dozens of dead are being ascertained.

It was 40°C in Yekaterinburg, so it is not surprising that fires raged in the Urals, the Trans-Urals and Western Siberia with a minimum of precipitation. In addition, record warm nighttime lows have been set in Siberia and northern Quebec.

New World as an example of a weather cataclysm

However, due to a unique set of circumstances, the most wondrous climatic miracles took place in July in the United States. Every day of the month, dozens of abnormal temperature phenomena were noted there. In total, more than 3200 such records have been recorded by the Southeast Atlantic center of the United States. How many people died from heat and sunstroke in Roosevelt's homeland is unknown, but, according to WHO preliminary estimates, in neighboring Mexico, the number is already in the thousands.

The already sweltering region of Florida is experiencing particularly fierce heat and near-XNUMX% humidity this year. This means that in such conditions, swimming in the ocean not only does not improve well-being, but is even dangerous to life and health.

The hottest zone in the North Atlantic moved from around Britain in June to the coast of Newfoundland in July. Water overheated by 5-10 °C can provoke storms here in late summer - early autumn and has already caused the appearance of large icebergs in the Labrador Sea, which was not observed earlier at this time. By the way, Greenland has lost about half of its snow cover over the current incomplete summer.

While mankind is absorbed by its mortal passions, the universe, meanwhile, gradually reminds: under the sun, nothing lasts forever. The new proverb “No Anglo-Saxons are needed with such Slavs” for this case can be rephrased as “Soon you won’t have to fight with such heat.” One way or another, against the global background, unbearably hot weather, one might say, still spares Russia on the whole ...