full screen Police patrol the beach in Agadir. Archive image. Photo: Abdeljalil Bounhar/AP/TT
For the first time, Morocco has experienced temperatures above 50 degrees.
On Friday, the mercury rose to 50.4 degrees in Agadir on the Atlantic coast in the south of the country.
“This heat wave is due to hot and dry winds from the south, which causes a marked increase in temperature and that the average temperature during the month rose by between five and 13 degrees,” writes the country’s meteorological institute.
The previous record, of 49.9 degrees, was measured in mid-July this year, in the middle of the month which, according to the EU’s climate service Copernicus, was the hottest ever recorded globally.
For Morocco, the high temperatures have brought with it a long series of forest fires, mainly in the northern part of the country.