ECMWF: The medium-term temperature forecast for summer 2024 in Europe

The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has published ominous forecast data for the temperature course of the coming summer in Europe.

The graph below shows historical forecasts for each month of May from 2017 to the present for the summer months (June-July-August). The gray bars show the uncertainty in the available scenarios, about temperature deviations from the 1993-2016 climate values (already a very warm period), and the gray circles show the extreme predictive values of all available scenarios.

The red « X » symbols show the actual temperatures observed after the end of the forecast periods and we note that the warmest summer was recorded in 2022, very close to one of the extreme forecast values in May 2022. In general, we can say that the model of ECMWF has so far predicted very accurately the general temperature trend in Europe in summer, and slightly underestimates the actual values. 

For this year, the blue bar on the right of the graph shows that one of the warmest summers in recent years is predicted, with 17% of all scenarios showing extreme high values, and the average close to +0.6 °C above climate values, the highest predictive value so far. The most extreme forecast deviation value is close to +2.5 ºC. In fact, it is the first time that none of the available forecast scenarios this May show negative deviations for the whole of Europe.

Source: ECMWF and Mika Rantanen on X