This year’s June in Greece was the warmest the country has experienced since 2010. According to the network of 53 meteorological stations of meteo.gr of the National Observatory of Athens (EAA), which have been in continuous operation since 2010, extremely high temperatures were recorded in comparison to the average of the period 2010 to 2019.
This year’s June was reportedly characterized by several consecutive days with significant positive temperature deviations, and it was by far the warmest June since 2010 throughout the country by a very wide margin.
Central Greece and the Peloponnese saw the largest positive temperature deviations with average monthly figures of up to 4.8 degrees Celsius above normal levels for the season.
Very significant positive deviations were noted throughout the country in the first 15 days and primarily in central Greece, the Peloponnese, and Crete on June 10th to June 13th. There were temperatures of about 10 to 12 degrees Celsius above the typical levels for the season. Small negative deviations were also seen but only in the Aegean islands after the 20th of the month.
On top of the slew of consecutive days with positive deviations, important absolute maximum temperature records were broken at 11 of the National Observatory’s stations.
In Athens, the average monthly deviation value for the maximum temperature was +4 degrees Celsius with 29 of the 30 days of the month being hotter than normal levels for the season.
In Thessaloniki, 28 days of the month were hotter than the average figure of the period 2010 to 2019. There, the average maximum temperature of the month fluctuated +2.6 degrees Celsius above typical levels.
In 70 percent of the climate stations, at least 29 days out of the 30 of the month were hotter than usual.
Greece’s heatwave in June
Towards the end of last month, tourists and visitors were warned not to take unnecessary risks in the wake of the deaths of tourists, including Americans and Europeans, during the heatwave. Three tourists were found dead in just one week, and more went missing with a 68-year-old German man found unresponsive on the Greek island of Crete.
Greece was hit by its earliest ever heatwave this year. Temperatures soared to 40 degrees Celsius in June. The Greek Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis put this down to the climate crisis, saying, “People need to understand that climate change is happening and that they need to be very careful.”
The government minister said, “We have had cases of foreign travelers who lost their lives in Greece. They lost their lives because they underestimated the phenomenon [of climate change],” as per Euronews.
He went on to say tourists need to be “very careful” while visiting the country as it grapples with soaring temperatures and to not take “unnecessary risks.”