All-Time Heat Records Tumble in Europe, Caribbean

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/European-Heat-Wave-Shifts-East-All-Time-Heat-Records-Tumble-Germany

Dr. Jeff Masters · July 1, 2019, 11:16 AM EDT

More than 30 locations in Central Europe—including towns and cities in Denmark, France, Germany, and Poland—set all-time heat records on Sunday as the continent’s historic June heat wave of 2019 shifted eastward. Three nations set all-time heat records for the month of June on Sunday: Germany, Switzerland, and Lichtenstein. The heat wave is easing on Monday, thankfully, as a cold front moves eastward over Central Europe.

In a separate heat wave, Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history for the Caribbean nation of Cuba, which recorded an all-time heat mark of 39.1°C (102.4°F) at Veguitas. Thanks go to weather records experts Jérôme Reynaud for this information.

In Germany alone, there were 34 all-time heat records on Sunday, and at least 243 stations saw their hottest June temperature on record, according to statistics compiled by German meteorologist Michael Theusner. Many of the June records in Germany were broken by impressive margins of 1.5–2.5°C (2.7–4.5°F), which testifies to the exceptional nature of the heat (as already noted in France, where more than a dozen stations on Friday broke that nation’s previous all-time high).

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"For all practical purposes, the heat wave is caused by human-made global warming,” Columbia University’s Jim Hansen told CBS News in an interview last week. Hansen gained fame more than 30 years ago, in the parched U.S. summer of 1988, when he testified before Congress that the world was seeing the first signs of climate change due to human-produced greenhouse gases. One of Hansen’s strongest statements at the time: ''It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.''

In his CBS interview, Hansen said that the odds of a heat wave as intense as this past week’s in Europe would be extremely remote without the contribution of heat-trapping emissions from fossil fuels.

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