Europe Climate – Sep 2026September 2026 Update

Novarupta (Katmai) eruption

The largest volcanic eruption anywhere in the world in the 20th century - 13 km3 of magma, about thirty times the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption - at Novarupta in Alaska on 6-8 June 1912. Ash reached 100,000 ft and cooled the Northern Hemisphere by roughly 0.3°C over 1912-13. Unlike a tropical eruption such as Pinatubo, a high-latitude eruption's haze stays in its own hemisphere, so it did little to the Southern Hemisphere.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, Alaska Volcano Observatory, National Park Service, Oman et al. 2005

Post-WWII industrial expansion begins

After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.

Klimont et al. 2013

The Dutch flood of 1953 (Watersnoodramp)

On the night of 31 January 1953 a storm surge on a spring tide broke the dikes in some 500 places across Zeeland, South Holland and North Brabant. 1,836 people drowned, 200,000 hectares flooded and 72,000 people lost their homes for months. The disaster led directly to the Delta Works, completed in 1997.

Watersnoodmuseum, Britannica

The European cold wave of February 1956

February 1956 was one of the coldest months on record across much of Europe. A long-lasting blocking high steered polar air in for weeks; the Danube froze, and Waldsassen in Bavaria fell to -36.3°C.

Wikipedia, The 1956 cold wave in Western Europe…

Keeling Curve begins

Charles David Keeling begins continuous measurements of atmospheric CO₂ at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, starting at about 315 ppm. The record has risen every year since and is now the longest unbroken direct measurement of CO₂ anywhere - the 'Keeling Curve'.

NOAA GMLGreenhouse Gases

Agung eruption

Agung's eruption in Bali put a veil of sulphate haze into the stratosphere that cooled global temperature by about 0.3°C over 1963-66.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

The Soviet drought and Moscow fires, 1972

1972 began with severe frosts on snowless fields that killed much of the winter grain, then turned to drought and heat across European Russia. Peat and forest fires filled Moscow with smoke, and the harvest failure forced the Soviet Union to buy about 28 million tonnes of grain abroad, much of it from the United States. The heat was confined to summer in European Russia, though: across Russia as a whole, 1972 is the 13th-coldest year in this site's 1950-2025 record.

Cambridge Core, Wikipedia

Pacific Decadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Pacific sea temperatures - switches from its cool to its warm phase in 1976-77. The change was abrupt enough to be called the 1976-77 Pacific Climate Shift: it warmed Alaska and the west coast of North America, and reorganised North Pacific fisheries.

Learn more →

Global SO2 emissions peak

Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.

Klimont et al. 2013

El Chichón eruption

A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program

1982-83 El Niño

The strongest El Niño since 1950 on NOAA's Relative Oceanic Niño Index, which strips out the background warming of the tropical oceans before ranking events. On the older index that leaves that warming in, 2015-16 comes out on top instead.

ONI +2.1°C · RONI +2.4°C

NOAA CPC, NOAA CPC (2)ENSO Tracker

The Antarctic ozone hole is discovered

British Antarctic Survey scientists Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jon Shanklin publish their Halley and Faraday measurements on 16 May 1985, showing October ozone over Antarctica had fallen to about two-thirds of earlier decades. The cause is traced to chlorofluorocarbons, and the finding triggers the fastest international environmental response on record.

Nature, UKRI

The Montreal Protocol

Signed in 1987 to phase out ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, the Montreal Protocol turned out to be one of the most consequential climate treaties ever agreed. CFCs are potent greenhouse gases in their own right, and NOAA estimates the Protocol prevented up to 2°C of warming by 2100 - around 1°C from the emissions avoided, and up to 1°C more by sparing forests and other carbon sinks from increased ultraviolet radiation.

NOAA, Wikipedia

CO₂ crosses 350 ppm

Atmospheric CO₂ passes 350 ppm. In the same year James Hansen told a US Senate committee that global warming was already detectable, the moment it entered mainstream politics. Twenty years later, in 2008, Hansen proposed 350 ppm as the safe upper limit - a level the world had already left behind.

NOAA GMLGreenhouse Gases

Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern

Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.

Zhong et al. 2023

Mount Pinatubo erupts

Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupts in June 1991, the largest eruption since 1912. Its sulphate haze cooled global surface temperature by about 0.5°C in 1992 and reduced rainfall over land for about two years, before the warming trend resumed.

Learn more →

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Atlantic sea temperatures, roughly 60-70 years long - flips to its warm phase in 1995. Warm phases are linked to more active Atlantic hurricane seasons, wetter summers in parts of north-west Europe and more frequent drought in the central and western United States.

Learn more →

Iceland's avalanche year, 1995

Two avalanches in the Westfjords in 1995 killed 34 people: 14 at Súðavík in January and 20 at Flateyri in October. They changed Iceland's approach to avalanche risk, leading to new hazard zoning and the large deflecting dams that now guard many towns.

Icelandic Met Office, Iceland Review

1997-98 El Niño

One of the strongest El Niños on record, and the one the textbook El Niño pattern is usually drawn from. It pushed 1998 to what was then the warmest year ever measured, and set off the first global-scale coral bleaching event.

ONI +2.4°C · RONI +2.3°C

NOAA CPC, NOAA NCEIENSO Tracker

Pacific Decadal Oscillation flips back to a cool phase

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a slow natural cycle in North Pacific sea temperatures - flips back to its cool phase around 1998-99. The cool phase that followed is one reason global surface warming appeared to slow in the 2000s, as more heat went into the deep Pacific.

Learn more →

The Elbe floods of 2002

In August 2002 the Elbe at Dresden rose to 9.40 m, beating a record that had stood since 1845, and 30,000 people were evacuated from the city. Across central Europe the floods killed 232 people; Germany took the largest share of about €27.7 billion in damage.

Deutscher Wetterdienst, NASA Earth Observatory

The European heatwave of 2003

The heatwave of summer 2003 killed more than 70,000 people across Europe - a count of excess deaths in 16 countries. France alone lost 14,800 people in the first half of August, most of them elderly.

Robine et al. 2008

The south-east European heatwaves of 2007

Two heatwaves in June and July 2007 set records across south-east Europe. Temperatures reached 47.5°C near Athens on 26 June and passed 45°C across the Balkans in late July; more than 500 deaths in Hungary were attributed to the heat, and wildfires burned across Greece.

Wikipedia

Global heatwave days sharply accelerate

Globally, heatwave days have roughly doubled each decade since 2010 - from an average of 5.3 a year in the 2000s to 11.5 in the 2010s and 18.9 so far in the 2020s, weighted by land area across 169 countries. El Niño has not become more extreme. The whole temperature distribution has shifted upwards, so the same natural El Niño and La Niña cycle now pushes far more days over fixed extreme-heat thresholds.

Learn more →Heatwave Days

Finland's record heat, 2010

On 29 July 2010 Joensuu airport in eastern Finland reached 37.2°C, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country, beating 35.9°C set at Turku in 1914. It came in a summer of broken records during the heatwave centred on Russia, though the year as a whole began with a hard winter.

Finnish Meteorological Institute, Yle

The Russian heatwave of 2010

Weeks of record heat across western Russia in July and August 2010, with peat and forest fires smothering Moscow in smoke. About 55,000 extra deaths, nearly 11,000 of them in Moscow. A study in Science found it beat the 2003 western European heatwave for both severity and area, redrawing Europe's temperature record map.

Barriopedro et al. 2011, NOAA PSL

CO₂ crosses 400 ppm

Atmospheric CO₂ passes 400 ppm at Mauna Loa on 9 May 2013 - a level the planet had not seen for 3-5 million years, since the Pliocene, when sea levels were many metres higher.

NOAA GMLGreenhouse Gases

Okjökull: the first glacier lost

In 2014 Okjökull, on Iceland's Ok volcano, became too thin to move under its own weight and lost its status as a glacier. It had covered about 38 km² in 1901. In 2019 Iceland unveiled a memorial plaque - the first anywhere to a glacier lost to climate change - reading: 'In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.'

NASA Earth Observatory

2015-16 El Niño

The strongest El Niño on record by raw ONI - though on NOAA's newer RONI index, which strips out background tropical-ocean warming, 1982-83 ranks slightly ahead instead. 2016 became the hottest year on record at that time (+1.0°C above pre-industrial).

ONI +2.6°C · RONI +2.3°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

2015-2025: the eleven warmest years on record

The eleven warmest years ever measured are 2015 through 2025, an unbroken run - the longest sustained stretch of record warmth in the 176-year instrumental record. 2023 and 2024 each broke the previous record in turn.

Learn more →

Portugal's wildfires of 2017

On 17 June 2017 fires erupted across central Portugal; 66 people died, 47 of them on a single road near Pedrógão Grande. In October a second wave of more than 7,900 fires swept northern Portugal and north-west Spain, killing 49 more. Together they are Portugal's deadliest wildfires on record.

Wikipedia, Wikipedia (2)

The Nordic heat and drought of 2018

A long, hot, dry summer in 2018 set all-time temperature records at 14 places in Norway, 10 in Finland and 3 in Sweden, some of them north of the Arctic Circle. Sweden had its worst drought since 1944 and more than 1,000 wildfires in July alone, its worst fire season in over a century.

Al Jazeera, Wiley GCB, Washington Post

COVID-19 lockdowns - CO₂ emissions dip

Global fossil CO₂ emissions fell about 5.8% in 2020, from 37.0 to 34.8 billion tonnes, yet atmospheric CO₂ still rose 2.5 ppm - the dip barely registers in the atmospheric record. Emissions were back to pre-pandemic levels by 2022.

Le Quéré et al. 2020

Low-sulphur shipping fuel rule (IMO 2020)

New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.

Gettelman et al. 2024

The Siberian heat of 2020

The first half of 2020 ran more than 5°C above average across Siberia, and on 20 June Verkhoyansk reached 38°C - the highest temperature ever confirmed inside the Arctic. Attribution scientists found the six months of heat at least 600 times more likely because of climate change, and effectively impossible without it. 2020 is Russia's warmest year in this site's 1950-2025 record.

World Weather Attribution, WMO

Cyprus's Arakapas fire, 2021

On 3 July 2021, in a week-long heatwave with temperatures above 40°C, a fire broke out near Arakapas in the Limassol hills. It burned about 55 km² of forest and farmland, damaged homes in several villages and killed four farmworkers - the worst wildfire in Cyprus's history.

Wikipedia, Cyprus Mail

Europe's record 48.8°C, Sicily 2021

On 11 August 2021 a station near Syracuse in Sicily recorded 48.8°C, which the World Meteorological Organization has verified as the highest temperature ever measured in continental Europe, beating the 48.0°C set in Athens in 1977.

WMO

The July 2021 floods in Germany and Belgium

Two days of extreme rain on 13-14 July 2021 sent the Ahr, Erft and Meuse rivers through towns in western Germany and eastern Belgium, killing at least 184 people in Germany and 38 in Belgium. At close to €50 billion it is Europe's costliest weather disaster since 1980, and attribution scientists found climate change made the rainfall 1.2 to 9 times more likely.

World Weather Attribution, Copernicus

Europe's drought and heat of 2022

In 2022 Europe had its worst drought in at least 500 years, on the European Commission's preliminary analysis, alongside record summer heat that killed an estimated 61,672 people between late May and early September - most of them in Italy (18,010), Spain (11,324) and Germany (8,173).

Ballester et al. 2023, CNBC / EU Joint Research Centre

2023-24 El Niño

A strong El Niño arriving on top of long-term greenhouse warming, with the cut in shipping sulphur from the 2020 fuel rule adding a little more. Together they produced the record global temperatures of 2023 and 2024.

ONI +2.0°C · RONI +1.4°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

Storm Hans, 2023

In August 2023 Storm Hans brought days of heavy rain to southern Norway, setting off floods and landslides and forcing thousands of people from their homes. On the Glåma the floodgates of the Braskereidfoss hydropower dam failed to open, and part of the dam gave way on 9 August.

PBS, Power Magazine

The Valencia floods of 2024

On 29 October 2024 a cut-off low - a DANA - stalled over eastern Spain. Parts of Valencia province took more than 300 mm of rain, and Chiva nearly 500 mm in eight hours. Flash floods killed more than 220 people, one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern Spanish history.

NASA Earth Observatory, Wikipedia