Weather: September is going to be…hell

Warmer than usual weather is expected in September in southeastern Europe (including Greece) according to the long-range forecast issued in August.

According to 89% of the available scenarios (more than 310 scenarios), the average temperature in September will be above normal for the season (reference period: 1993-2016). More specifically, the most likely scenarios are deviations of 1-2 °C (38%) and 0-1 °C (31%), while the probability of deviations of average temperatures of more than 2 °C is about 19%.

Finally, there is an 11% chance that the average temperature will be below normal, as reported by pelop.gr.

These forecasts are based on a total of 350 possible scenarios from the following forecast centres: ECMWF (Europe), UKMO (UK), Meteo-France (France), JMA (Japan), NCEP (USA), DWD (Germany) and CMCC (Italy), as provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service of the European Commission. It is stressed that long-range forecasts are characterised by high uncertainty and aim to estimate the trend in the monthly and seasonal evolution of average weather conditions.

Temperature changes on a daily and local basis due to the influence of all types of weather systems may vary significantly from the average variation over a period of a month or more over a wider area.

If the worst-case scenario, which predicts average temperatures will rise by 2 degrees Celsius, is confirmed, conditions will be significantly warmer.

However, it is worth noting that “September 2023 was the warmest September ever recorded globally” and broke the previous record by an impressive margin, continuing a series of global monthly records that began in June, as announced by the European Copernicus Observatory.

September 2023 was “1.75°C warmer than the September average for the period 1850-1900,” the pre-industrial reference period, before human-caused global warming began, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

In recent days, some of the highest temperatures in the country have been recorded in Achaia. In fact, in Vračnica on August 15, the temperature rose to 42.1°C, the highest reading in the entire country. Furthermore, the average maximum temperature in the country was 35.2°C, with 174 stations out of 488 currently active stations recording temperatures above 37°C, of ​​which 30 recorded temperatures above 40°C.