The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed on Tuesday the temperature record of 48.8°C reached on August 11, 2021 in Sicily, following a long protocol of examination of the data and measurement tools used for 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 in a statement.
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 record in Italy.
The WMO carefully checks the data as well as the instruments and conditions in which they were recorded before confirming a record, which explains why the new record was only validated two and a half years later.
An “alarming trend in pursuit of records”
“Such careful assessment gives us confidence that our global temperature records are correctly measured
,” explained 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 stressed.
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 likely, that even more severe extremes will occur in the future in Europe", added 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
,” Randall Cerveny, who launched the WMO archives on the phenomena, told AFP. extreme weather 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.