Markus’ Blog

An article on the website of the Austrian Broadcasting Station talks about some pretty scary temperature developments in large parts of southern and central Europe.

The report is based on a new US study that says that over the next few decades it will become unbearably hot in the Mediterranean. One of the co-authors of the study, Jeremy Pal, is quoted saying the extreme weather conditions of today will be normal in the future. The extreme weather conditions then will be unprecedented.

The study also says that a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can greatly reduce the impact, but there will still be negative effects. Or in other words: if we do something (or a lot, actually) now, we suffer a little, if we don’t, we suffer a lot.

Now, the scary thing is that it is already noticeable. The changes in weather patters have already happened and are still happening. Last winter was pretty much the first time ever that even Alpine regions in Austria barely got snow.

Then, again for the first time ever, temperatures went up into the mid to high twenties (Celsius) for a brief period as early as April. Of course it cooled down again after a couple of days, but still. Now, Austria is experiencing 35°C weather along with many other parts of Europe. That’s definitely unusual, and it seems like change is happening faster and faster.

During the early 2000s everybody was noticing that spring (and to some degree fall) were getting shorter. It would stay cool fairly long, but then jump 10-15 degrees within a couple of days (from, say, 8°C to 20°C). Summer had arrived. No more gradual increase in temperature. I guess that’s just gotten even more extreme now. Just this past week they had tornadoes and other severe weather conditions in many parts of Austria and the neighbouring countries.

To top it all off, I just found on the web that there was snowfall in Western Austria and Switzerland at the end of May of this year. 28°C on the weekend, snowfall two days later on Tuesday.

This is what makes this study so scary to me. That we can already see and feel the effects of the change.