Five years after recording the highest temperature in European history, residents of Floridia, Italy, live very different lives, with many rarely going outside and others' livelihoods under threat due to increasingly frequent and prolonged intense heatwaves.
Officials in Floridia, a Sicilian town on the outskirts of Syracuse with a population of 20,000, say the extreme heat is keeping people inside. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) officially confirmed a new record temperature for continental Europe of 48.8C on 11 August 2021, measured by Sicily's Agrometeorological Information Service (SIAS) in Monasteri, a rural district around three miles from Floridia's centre.
Though temperatures have cooled slightly, the effects on daily life have changed totally, with locals saying it is so hot at times that they often struggle to breathe.
A 'sad warning sign'
Floridia's culture councillor Serena Spada said it feels like the town has endured another lockdown during summer months. "It's awful because many people end up shut indoors," he said. "In a way, we are all experiencing another kind of lockdown. Even people with small children find themselves in this situation. Children cannot go to the park or play outside because, until late afternoon, temperatures are genuinely hostile."
Piazza del Popolo, the town's once thriving traditional social hub, is now nearly empty for much of the day. Lined with cafés and palm trees, residents prefer to stay at home, with tourists now few and far between in the summer months.
Locals have a cherished tradition of 'pigghiari u frescu', which involves families bringing chairs outside to catch the breeze and socialise, but with the heat continuing late into the evening, many now struggle.
Record-breaking day remembered
Resident Ugo Tomasello recalled the record-breaking temperature day, saying: "As I walked, I began struggling to breathe and thought: 'I could die here in the street, with no one around to help me'."
Many thought that the record-breaking day would be an isolated incident, but instead, hot summers have become common. Councillor Spada added: "It turned out to be a very sad warning sign."
The previous record for continental Europe, 48C, was recorded in July 1977, in the cities of Athens and Elefsina, Greece. But Floridia's near-50C conditions may not be a one off, experts have warned.
Experts warn of greater extremes
"The extremes presented before the WMO for adjudication are snapshots of our current climate. It is possible, indeed likely, that greater extremes will occur across Europe in the future," said Professor Randall Cerveny, Rapporteur of Climate and Weather Extremes for WMO. "When such observations are made, new WMO evaluation committees will be formed to adjudicate such observations as extremes."
Professor Cerveny added: "Most investigations, like this one, are lengthy procedures because of the meticulous care that the WMO undertakes in certifying weather observations. Such painstaking evaluation provides the critical confidence that our global records of temperatures are properly being measured. Beyond that, this investigation demonstrates the alarming tendency for continuing high temperature records to be set in specific regions of the world."
Scientists say individual extremes are less significant than the steady rise of average temperatures. On August 12 this year, Floridia reached 33.3C, 4.1C above the average for 1961-1990's historic norm.
"It is really the increase in average temperatures that worries us," said SIAS director Luigi Pasotti. "We are no longer talking about extreme temperature peaks lasting one or two days, as happened in 2021. We are talking about entire weeks, even months during which temperatures remain consistently high."
