Update: Europe Heat Indeed Shattered Records

People trying to keep cool in Europe this week. Photo by Nicolas
Economou/NurPhoto/Getty Images

As expected, more all-time heat records were set in western Europe Thursday as the second unprecedented heat wave of the summer grilled the region.

Paris soared to incredible 108 degrees, beating the old record of 104 degrees to be the hottest temperature anyone has seen there. Breaking an all-time record is one thing. Breaking it by four degrees is just incredible. 

Records in Paris go back to 1658, so it's not like they just started keeping track of temperatures in Paris and missed something a few years back. The heat really was just out of this world.

Germany on Thursday had that nation's hottest temperature on record, when it got to 106.7 degrees in the town of Lingen. That breaks a national record that was established just 24 hours earlier.

In the Netherlands, the temperature reached 104 .7 degrees, also breaking the national record set a day earlier. Before that, the Netherlands hottest temperature on record of 101.5 degrees  had stood for 75 years.

As has been the case with many other recent extremes, a lot of experts say the hands of climate chang were all over this heat wave.

Says Reuters:

"Peter Inness, senior research fellow at the University of Reading (Great Britain) said: 'The fact that so many recent years have had very high summer temperatures both globally and across Europe is very much in line with what we expect from man-made global warming."

Climate change might be influencing these kinds of hot spells in two ways. The baseline temperature is just warmer than it was decades ago, which means the chances have increased for record breaking spikes in temperature.

Additionally, it's possible climate change is messing with the jet stream, making blocked, stalled and much wavier patterns, like the one that caused the Europe heat wave this week, to become more common.

Of course, these blocky patterns create areas of cool weather, too, where the jet stream dips. It's just that most of the time, the cool waves aren't as chilly as they used to be.

The pattern that caused the western Europe heat wave is creating a pretty sizeable area of chilly weather in parts of Russia and surrounding areas. There might be a few record lows there, but it won't match the extraordinary departures from normal in western Europe.

Similarly, as noted yesterday, a surge of dry air into the southern United States created some record low temperatures. Austin, Texas, dropped to 58 degrees, the first time on record there that a July temperature sank below 60 degrees. But, by afternoon, it was 90 degrees in Austin, which is only a few degrees below normal.

As the heat dome works its way north through places like Norway and finally the Arctic, it could also re-jigger the jet stream over our neck of the woods to give Vermont relatively cool weather during much of the first half of August.

It won't be extremely cold, and there's no guarantee that it will actually be refreshingly cool, but there is a decent chance that could happen. Stay tuned......