A vogue supported by the marketing campaigns of professionals such as the Norwegian tourist office which, on its site, boasts of “delightfully fresh” summers with temperatures “generally” between 12 and 23 ° C.
But the mercury thrusts recorded in the region in July have foiled expectations.
“Yesterday (Sunday) marked the end of a period of 22 consecutive days with temperatures above 30 ° C in Finland,” the Finnish Meteorological Institute announced on Monday.
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“This is the longest period of this type since the start of the surveys in 1961,” he said.
According to his Norwegian counterpart, July was the hottest third ever recorded in Norway since 1901 with temperatures higher 2.8 ° C to the normal seasonal. The so-called “tropical” nights, when the thermometer remains above 20 ° C, have become commonplace.
What give hot sweats to tourists who came in search of summer freshness.
Residing in Stockholm, Moussaab El Bacha testified to the surprise of his parents who came to visit him from Morocco.
“They expected a break of freshness, far from Moroccan summer, but instead, they had the impression that the heat had followed them to Sweden,” he told AFP.
“It was a bit surreal for them to live such high temperatures so far north. They constantly repeated: + we are sure that we did not land in the south of Spain?”, He said.
In northern Sweden, in Haparanda, Mercury displayed in July 25 ° C or more for 14 consecutive days, and Jokkmokk, the heat wave has spread over fifteen days, from unheard of for a century, according to the Swedish meteorology institute.
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A rink as oasis
In Rovaniemi, a Finnish city located north of the polar circle, temperatures also reached the 30 ° C mark, more than in the south of Europe at the same time.
The surge of Mercury was such that the municipality of Joensuu, in south-eastern Finland, opened the stands of a rink to the public in order to unclog hospitals.
“The space began to miss the emergency room due to the heat” which has caused numerous hospitalizations, the head of regional health services in Northern Carelie, Mikael Ripatti, told AFP.
“The goal was to offer a place to go if it was too hot at home,” he said.
Qualified as “exceptional” in the media, this heat wave could well be less and less.
According to scientists, repeated heat waves are an unequivocal marker of the global warming and these heat waves are called to multiply, lie down and intensify.
“There have been heat waves in the past and there will still be in the future,” deciphers Hanenele Korhonen, a professor at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
But as climate change increases global temperatures, “we cross more and more often the heat waves, and heat waves become more intense,” she said. These “will become warmer, longer and more frequent”.
“To determine or assess the role of climate change in the long heat wave (which struck) northern Sweden, an in -depth allocation study would be necessary,” said Sverker Hellström of the Swedish Meteorological Institute.
But, he adds, “the frequency of this type of weather event has increased and could continue to increase in the future”.
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