The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms this Tuesday the temperature record of 48.8°C reached on August 11, 2021 in Sicily.
It was necessary to complete a long protocol for examining the data and the measurement tools used to ensure its scientific validity.
“An international panel of atmospheric scientists verified the temperature recorded by an automated weather station in Syracuse, on the Italian island of Sicily,” WMO said.
The previous record was 48.0°C recorded in Greece on July 10, 1977 in Athens and Eleusis.
This record, although recognized by the WMO, had not been independently verified by the organization, unlike the new one from 2021. The WMO very carefully verifies the data as well as the instruments and the conditions in which they were collected. recorded before confirming a record, which explains why the last one was only validated two and a half years later.
“Even more serious extremes” in the future
“Such careful assessment gives us confidence that our global temperature records are correctly measured,” explains American geographer Randall Cerveny, rapporteur on climate and weather extremes for the WMO.
“Beyond that, this survey demonstrates the alarming trend of continued high temperature records in specific regions of the world,” he emphasizes.
The results of the investigation carried out by the panel of scientists were published in the scientific journal International Journal of Climatology.
The potential records presented to the WMO are “snapshots of our current climate and “it is possible, even probable, that even more severe extremes will occur in the future in Europe,” adds Professor Cerveny.
The WMO expert committee is carrying out further investigations, including whether Tropical Cyclone Freddy broke the record for the longest-lasting tropical cyclone.
Freddy, formed in early February 2023 off the coast of Australia, has ravaged southern Africa twice.
“The fundamental question will be whether we count the time during which Freddy did not reach the stage of a tropical storm,” explains Randall Cerveny, who launched the WMO archives on extreme weather phenomena in 2007. The current record for duration is held by Typhoon John, which lasted 31 days in 1994. Freddy has apparently surpassed it but validation takes time.