Rising temperatures and challenges for civil protection
Meteorological data shows that 2024 was the warmest year on record for Greece. It is also expected to be declared the warmest year globally, demonstrating the increasing challenges posed by climate change.
According to the meteorological data analysed by the ClimateBook scientific team, the average temperature in Greece for 2024 was above the average value for the period 1991-2020 on 77% of the days. More specifically, positive deviations were recorded on 282 days of the year. The professor at the University of Athens and member of the European Union's Scientific Committee on Climate Change Constantinos Cartalis, told ANA-MPA that the increasing trend of temperatures in Greece had already been observed since the last decade.
"Along with the temperature, the joint occurrence of heatwave and drought, one of the combined phenomena affecting the Mediterranean, is now being considered. A second example of a combined phenomenon in the Mediterranean is the common occurrence of marine heat waves and storms," Cartalis said.
As he explains, there is an increase in the number of days with heatwaves and droughts throughout the country, from 47 days for the period 1971-2000 to 150 days for the period 2001-2023. The largest increases concern eastern Central Greece (Attica, Boeotia, Fthiotida), Crete, and the Cyclades islands. With regard to floods, as Kartalis stresses, the areas most vulnerable to the changing climatic conditions are Central Macedonia, a large part of central Thessaly, Attica, smaller areas in the Peloponnese and Epirus, and, of course, urban areas such as Athens (mainly along the Kifissos river), Thessaloniki, and the cities of Thessaly, the Peloponnese, and Crete.
The year 2024 took over from 2023, in turn breaking temperature records both globally and for Greece. In particular, according to data from ClimateBook, the two-month period June-July 2024 with an average maximum temperature of 31 ° C is the warmest in the history of records in Greece, with a large difference from the 2nd year, 2012.
The Director of Research of the National Observatory of Athens Costas Lagouvardos, points out that the continuous increase in temperature as well as the increase in the frequency and intensity of severe weather events are problems that concern the Mediterranean.
"The increasingly prolonged heat waves, the frequent occurrence of periods of very high temperatures, and heat stress, which has a significant impact on our health and other sectors, such as agricultural production and ecosystems," notes Lagouvardos and adds that these conditions respectively lead to very flammable forests, thus greatly increasing the risk of forest fires, which is a huge problem for the Mediterranean.
AMNA
