Data shows 2020 was by far Europe’s hottest year
Last year Europe experienced its hottest year since records began, according to recent report. Temperatures were registered at 1.9C above average when compared to temperatures between 1981 to 2010 and many countries, such as France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Sweden, Norway and Finland, reported their highest annual average temperatures on record. The 31st State of the Climate report also noted that all five of the continent’s hottest years on record have been since 2014.
IZA World of Labor author Marie Connolly has also noted that climate forecast models for the second half of the 21st century predict a dramatic rise in the number of days featuring temperatures above 35°C (95°F). As such, she has looked into climate change and how it might affect people’s wellbeing and how they spend their time: “Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to affect the distribution of all climatic variables, including substantial increases in temperatures. Very hot days can lower time spent working and shift leisure from outdoors to indoors. Barring significant—and costly—adaptations, such as increased use of air conditioning or intraday shifting of activities, changing climatic conditions could affect well-being,” she writes in her article.
The report published by the American Meteorological Society also notes that 2020 was one of the three hottest years on record globally. ” This report adds to all the other evidence that human-induced climate change is affecting every part of the globe, but not all regions are experiencing the change at the same rate. The Arctic is continuing to warm at a faster pace than lower latitudes, but Europe’s annual average temperature is also increasing quite rapidly,” Dr Robert Dunn, a Met Office scientist and the lead editor for the global climate chapter of the report, said.
Read Marie Connolly’s article Climate change and the allocation of time.