Seasonal Variability of Trends in Regional Hot and Warm Temperature Extremes in Europe

Abstract

Extremely hot or warm weather over the course of the year may have significant impacts on many aspects of human life, the economy, and the natural environment. Until now a thorough assessment of changes of extreme heat or warm events in Europe was hindered by the number of metrics employed, time periods examined, and most studies being conducted in the summer season only. Here, we employ the Extremity Index (EI) to investigate long-term trends in extremely hot or warm days in Europe over the course of the year, with a special focus on their frequency, spatial extent, and intensity. An extreme temperature event (ETE) is defined as a day with an unusually high temperature for a given location and season, even if such a temperature would not be considered extremely high in an absolute sense. The research is conducted in five spatial domains that together cover a large portion of Europe. The period of the most recent 70 years is considered. In all examined regions, mainly significant increasing trends since 1950 are evident for seasonal EI; therefore, also for ETE frequency, intensity, and spatial range. Yet, every region is characterized by its own event pattern, and trends across the continent strongly vary geographically and seasonally. Our study highlights that examined trends of temperature extremes are accelerating and in the last 40 years the rate of change has been even more than three times greater than in the entire study period. The greatest changes were noted for the summer season in Central Europe and Eastern Europe for the most recent 40-year period.