After mini tornado and floods should Austria expect a summer of extremes?

Heavy rainfall led to flooded cellars and muddy roads in Lower Austria on Tuesday afternoon.

In Styria, Graz residents recorded what seemed to be a tornado in the city (the head of the Styrian meteorological agency later confirmed a "small" tornado there), with large amounts of rainfall causing havoc.

Möglicher Tornado 🌪 vor kurzem in Graz Eggenberg.
Video: Facebook/Stefan Gruber pic.twitter.com/TqqVQy3B4X

— Manuel Oberhuber (@manu_oberhuber) May 21, 2024

 

Austria's meteorological institute Geosphere Austria had already warned of thunderstorms, some of them heavy, moving north through the country—an alert that included the possibility of landslides and flooding. 

The warnings have been plentiful. Recently, experts alerted that global warming would make extreme weather events much more frequent and stronger, as The Local reported.

Summers, in particular, could see torrential downpours, hail storms as well as heat waves. 

Four heatwaves occurred in 2023, two of which lasted an unusually long time, lasting up to 18 days (July) and 16 days (August).

READ ALSO: How to protect yourself during storm season in Austria

So what about this summer?

There is nothing to indicate that people in Austria will have some relief this summer.

In fact, it has been a warmer than average year so far, with record temperatures throughout. According to Geosphere Austria, the recent winter was one of the two warmest on record.

February followed the trend, and it was the hottest in Austrian history. Parts of Austria also saw record heat in March, while there was "summer in April" in the Alpine country. GeoSphere Austria expects the country to be heading towards a hotter summer season also in 2024. 

Already in June, the probability of above-average temperatures is 60 percent.

In July, above-average temperatures will occur in about 60 percent of the cases. The probability of average temperatures is 20 percent, the same as the chance of below-average temperatures. 

The probability of above-average temperatures in August is just under 80 percent. Average temperatures occur in about a quarter of the cases, and the likelihood of below-average temperatures is less than 10 percent.

READ ALSO: What is Austria’s official emergency-warning phone app and do I need it?

The institute does point out that a seasonal forecast is not an exact forecast in the sense of a 3-day overview but a “rough estimate of the average temperatures conditions in the Eastern Alps”. 

It may seem counterintuitive to think that Austria could be heading for a summer of drought and heavy rains. Still, experts explain that the hotter temperatures make extreme events more likely.

And Austria is more affected by warming than the global average, mainly because it is located in the middle of the continent, and land masses warm up faster than oceans. 

Because of that, the Alpine Republic has already been 2C warmer on average over the last 30 years, almost twice as much as the global temperature increase compared to pre-industrial times.