After intense and prolonged heat over the Balkan states, Central Europe has also been reached by a heatwave with daily maximum temperatures ＞35°C. A cooling is expected over the weekend of 17.-18. August 2024.

Around one month ago, Eastern European countries faced enormous heat because of a so-called “Heat Dome”, where the sinking air within a high-pressure zone heats up considerably due to compression. If a stationary weather situation prevails, the heated air masses cannot escape, causing temperatures to rise further.
This caused prevailing drought and large-scale forest fires in some Balkan states.

At the beginning of August, Southern and Central Europe experienced above-average maximum temperatures, reaching 35°C and more in the last few days. Our temperature map provides a good overview of the current and past measured temperatures.

The reason for the prolonged heat is a disturbance in the atmospheric circulation, known in meteorology as ‘blocking’. A stationary area of high pressure over Central Europe over a long period prevents the exchange of cooler air masses from the higher latitudes. During such stable weather conditions, weather conditions often remain unchanged for several days.

Such large-scale atmospheric structures can be observed and interpreted particularly well with the help of pressure maps at different heights. For example, our pressure map (500hPa) shows the geopotential height of the 500hPa pressure level. This means that it shows the altitude in metres above sea level up to which the atmospheric pressure has been reduced to 500hPa. Areas coloured yellow/orange only reach the 500hPa limit at higher altitudes (>5.5km), due to increased pressure in the lower and middle troposphere. Blue-coloured regions with a lower geopotential altitude (<5.5km), on the other hand, show places with lower air pressure. So-called troughs (polar, cold air masses flowing southwards) and ridges (subtropical, warm air masses flowing northwards) are visible in the figure. As the ridge over Central Europe has only moved very slowly to the west over the last few days, there has been hardly any exchange with cooler air masses from the higher latitudes.

During the next few days, the ridge will propagate further westwards, bringing Central Europe increasingly under the influence of the cold air trough. Therefore, a temporary cooling is expected for the next few days over the weekend (2024-08-17) for most parts of Europe, as seen in the temperature forecast maps. Towards the middle of next week, however, the next ridge will appear over Europe again, and temperatures will rise again. This trend can be tracked in our 14-Day meteogram.