Facts: September in Sweden
In Sweden, September offered record heat as well as rain and snow.
High summer heat was measured on eight of the days of the month, i.e. a maximum daily temperature that reaches at least 25 degrees. In Halmstad and Ullared, for example, September was warmer than both July and August, something that has never happened before since SMHI’s measurements started.
But September also got off to an unusually wet start. In Uppland, Västmanland and eastern Dalarna, 24-hour rainfall was measured at several stations, which was far above what you normally get in the whole month of September.
Besides, it was snowing. On September 20, eleven days after Älvsbyn measured Norrland’s highest known September temperature at 26.4 degrees, Kiruna woke up to the greatest snow depth for September in all of Sweden since 2003. 38 centimeters of snow had fallen, but disappeared relatively quickly.
Late summer heat is not unusual for September in Europe. But this year’s month has been warmer than usual in many countries on the continent.
In Denmark, the average temperature was 16.3 degrees, 2.7 degrees warmer than normal for the month and 0.1 degrees above the old record from 1999, 2006 and 2016, according to Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI). The average temperature for September was higher than for July and August and only 0.1 degrees lower than June.
“Both September and the summer as a whole have been highly remarkable. We have never before experienced September being warmer than July and August and almost touching June, which ended as the warmest summer month,” writes DMI’s climatologist Mikael Scharling.
Many records
Also Finland made a record listing for September with the average temperature 12.2 degrees. It also happened in a number of other European countries such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Great Britain and Switzerland.
In France, heatwave warnings were issued for the first time ever in September. When the department of Vienne recorded 38.8 degrees, it was the highest temperature recorded in the country during September.
Germany’s average temperature of 17.2 degrees was almost 4 degrees above the average for September during the period 1961-1990 and “further evidence that we are in the midst of climate change”, according to a head of the weather agency DWD.
Parts of Europe are expected to experience unusually high temperatures in October as well, including the UK, which is believed to be facing a heat wave. In Spain, new records have been set for October with 38.2 degrees in Montoro, near Córdoba, on Sunday. The record heat can last up to ten days, warns the weather authority Aemet.
Hottest year?
Record quotations for September have also been made outside Europe, including in Japan where the month was the warmest since measurements began 125 years ago.
The EU’s climate monitoring service Copernicus has found that the summer was the hottest recorded globally, with an average temperature for June, July and August of 16.77 degrees.
Copernicus sees it as likely that 2023 will be the warmest year ever recorded on Earth. According to scientists, climate change, driven by human burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas, is pushing global temperatures up. The world is now 1.1 degrees warmer than in pre-industrial times.