Apocalyptic heat in Prague and Europe captured from space
The scorched earth and fires are captured by satellites flying over Western and Central Europe, as well as instruments on the ISS space station.
The Old Continent is one of the regions that is warming faster than most other regions of the planet. Its inhabitants have experienced numerous heat waves in recent years, but also in recent days. They are the consequence fires as well as excess deaths.
The heat is not avoided in the Czech Republic either, where the temperature approaches 37 degrees Celsius in the middle.
Fire pit in Prague
The European Space Agency ESA shared on Twitter data from the ECOSTRESS instruments – the thermal radiometer of the American agency NASA, which is mounted on the ISS space station. the device recorded a temperature map in Prague at the beginning of the summer. It shows the places with the biggest fires, which are better to avoid these days
This is going to be summer…
Earth surface temperature in Prague on June 18, 2022 according to registration @NASAJPL ECOSTRESS device on board @Space station. @esa currently using this tool to simulate the data that will be returned @CopernicusEU LSTM mission. pic.twitter.com/0qexBuIlKZ— ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) July 14, 2022
Prague is a metropolis that is noticeably warming up. This is confirmed by a study published this year in a professional journal Urban climatewhich was prepared by experts from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of the Environment of the University of Agriculture.
The researchers compared the average daily temperatures measured at the Prague-Ruzyne station in the warm half-year (May–September) in individual decades from the eighties of the last century to the first decade of this century and their impact on mortality in Prague.
They found that the risk of death due to heat was almost twice as high in Prague in the past decade than in the three previous decades. The record number of heat-related deaths was recorded in 2015. At that time, there were more than 250 deaths in Prague, which was more than five percent of all deaths between May and September.
“The frequency and intensity of heat waves in the past decade was unprecedented,” he quotes website of the Academy of Sciences Aleš Urbana, head of the scientific team. “While the average summer temperature in the 1980s was 15.3 degrees Celsius, between 2010 and 2019 it was 16.9 degrees,” the scientist added.
Forty humbled
In the inflow of hot air from Africa, which lives at a lower pressure in the west of Portugal, temperatures in some areas of Europe have been climbing to the forties for a week now, and in some places even exceeding it. In London on Tuesday, they measured a temperature higher than forty degrees for the first time. They even recorded 47 degrees in the Portuguese city of Pinhão.
The following thermal image shows a fire in Milan.
A broader view of the Earth’s surface temperatures in @ComuneMI (#Milan in #Italy), as seen @NASAJPL ECOSTRESS device on board @Space station. @esa uses the instrument to simulate the data that will eventually be returned by the LSTM mission: https://t.co/qQJIuw9bt5 pic.twitter.com/UVg3XzaNNN
— ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) July 18, 2022
“In some areas of south-eastern France now a state of apocalyptic heat has set in,” AFP quoted meteorologist Francois Gourand from Meteo France.
Another thermal image proves that Paris was also suffocatingly hot at the beginning of summer.
.@NASAJPL ECOSTRESS device on board @Space station recorded ground temperatures around Paris, France on June 18, 2022.
The hottest surfaces are clearly visible, but the cooling effect of parks, vegetation and water is also clearly visible: https://t.co/qQJIuwqMRF pic.twitter.com/WJXhcSrmDn— ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) July 12, 2022
It is clear that the current wave is causing thousands of people to succumb in Europe. Over 900 victims of the heat are already registered in Spain and Portugal.
Heat and drought are accompanied by numerous wildfires. Several of them broke out in London on Tuesday. Sentinel 2 satellitewhich belongs to the ESA, captured a fire in the mountains at the southern end of the province of Salamanca in Castile and the smoke coming from it.
The fire, which started in the early afternoon of July 11, affected the Natural Park of Las Batuecas-Sierra de Francia in #Spain.@CopernicusEMS map services have been activated: https://t.co/VWrkcWxLqM
@CopernicusEU #Sentinel2 image from July 13 pic.twitter.com/R8it1qNj0g
— ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) July 15, 2022
Visitors to the island of Crete may also encounter fires. The birth of one of them was recorded by the same satellite on Sunday near the village of Melambes.
He shoots in #Crete as seen @CopernicusEU #Sentinel2
Over the weekend, wildfires burned an area of approximately 15 square kilometers – luckily sparing the village of Melambes. @CopernicusEMS has been activated. pic.twitter.com/LgEetPPfqm— ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) July 18, 2022
However, the heat also hit other places in the northern hemisphere. The following map shows the surface air temperature in its eastern part on July 13, 2022. It was created by the NASA Goddard Space Center’s modeling system.
In the summer of 2022, heat waves broke records around the world and fueled wildfires as temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). https://t.co/nC67K3sekq pic.twitter.com/WlyLFi9VHm
— NASA Earth (@NASAEarth) July 15, 2022
“While there is an ‘atmospheric wave’ pattern describing the alternation of warm (redder) and cool (bluer) values in different locations, the large area of extreme heat you see on the map is a clear indicator that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are causing extreme weather , which affect our living conditions,” says Steven Pawson of the Goddard Center on the site Earth Observatory.
Resources:
AVCR, NASA Earth Observatory, Urban climate