The strange glee over the European heatwave

You could almost sense climate campaigners willing those thermometers in Sardinia to nudge into the unknown – a reading above 48.8°C would have marked a new European record and unleashed yet more forewarnings of climatic Armageddon.    

But alas, they don’t appear to have got their way – at least not today. As of 6.30 p.m. the highest reported temperatures measured today were in the region of 45ºC, on Sardinia. There was a consolation prize in that the World Meteorological Organisation did finally verify the reading of 48.8ºC in Sicily made on 10 August 2021. Prior to that, the European record was established way back in 1977, which was beginning to look a little inconvenient for the narrative of an Earth which is ‘on fire’.

The all-time global record for temperature, however, remains that measured at Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California on 10 July 1913 (although, hardly surprisingly, there are campaigners lobbying the WMO to have this kicked out of the record books on the grounds that it might have been measured during a sandstorm, whyever that should make it invalid).