This year will be the warmest ever, October was a record

Data for October show that the tenth month with an average air temperature of 15.3 degrees Celsius was the warmest ever. The global trend of increasing temperature is also copied by the extremely high values measured in the Czech Republic.

“It was the third warmest October in a row for us since 1961,” confirmed climatologist Lenka Stašová from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (ČHMÚ). Compared to the 1991 to 2020 average, it was 2.9 degrees Celsius warmer.

Conversely, the coldest October was in 1974, with an average monthly temperature of 4.4 degrees Celsius. This year’s September was also record warm.

Alarming heat

According to meteorologist Michal Žák from the Department of Atmospheric Physics of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, the trend exceeds the expectations of experts.

“This year, climate change has already reached such an intensity that we are experiencing an unprecedented development of temperatures. I don’t want to be too negative, but the word alarming comes to mind,” Žák told Novinky.

We are experiencing an unprecedented development of temperatures

He identified human-caused climate change as the cause, mainly the high amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The amount of emissions last year was the highest in history,” Žák pointed out. According to him, the El Niño phenomenon, during which the natural conditions of the water temperature in the Pacific Ocean change and have an effect on the events in the atmosphere, also contributes to the warming.

October was a record

This year’s extremely warm October also set another record. The highest daily temperatures exceeded 20 degrees Celsius or more, and on seven days the temperature at some stations even reached the summer 25 degrees.

“Such a high number of summer days in October is quite unusual, ten summer days were recorded only in 1966 and the same number as this year in 1995,” said climatologist Lenka Crhová from the Czech National Institute of Meteorology.

In terms of precipitation, October was normal in the territory of our republic, but normal values exceeded the measured data on sunshine.

“The average length of sunshine in October was 123.6 hours, which is 117 percent of the normal from 1991 to 2020,” the climatologist said.

Residents in the South Bohemian region, southern Moravia and Vysočín enjoyed the most hours of sunlight. On the contrary, the sun shone for the least hours in Liberec, in the vicinity of Hradec Králové and in the Karlovy Vary region.

Meteorologists measured the only period with a significant negative deviation between October 15 and 18. During these days, at many stations, the minimum daily air temperature dropped below the freezing point.

The lowest air temperature – minus 9.2 degrees Celsius – was shown by the thermometer on October 18 at Horská Kvilda station.