Europe marks unconfirmed hottest-ever temperature on the continent
Europe appears to have marked its hottest-ever recorded temperature on Wednesday, though the reading has not yet been officially confirmed.
A station in Sicily, operated by the island's Agrometeorological Information System (SIAS), recorded a temperature of 48.8°C near Syracuse.
That's slightly hotter than the previous record of 48°C set in Athens, Greece, in 1977. That reading currently stands as the "official" record for the continent by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which has not yet verified this week's apparent challenger in Sicily.
The new reading comes at a time when much of Europe is baking beneath high pressure, beneath which air sinks and compresses, gaining in temperature as it does so.
A similar 'heat dome' setup has been a common feature in western North America this summer. In June, a record-shattering bout of heat saw the Interior B.C. village of Lytton crush Canada's warmest-recorded temperature three days in a row, finally peaking at 49.6°C on June 29th. The following day, a fire sparked in the oppressive heat and dry conditions burned down much of the community.
Sicily's record this month comes on the heels of the newly-released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found that global warming due to human-induced Climate Change was higher than initially thought, and that heat extremes will become more likely over the coming century.
