'Feels like summer': Warm winter breaks temperature records in Europe

Record-high winter temperatures swept across parts of Europe over the new year, bringing calls from activists for faster action against climate change while offering short-term respite to governments struggling with high gas prices.

Hundreds of sites have seen temperature records smashed in the past days, from Switzerland to Poland to Hungary, which registered its warmest Christmas Eve in Budapest and saw temperatures climb to 18.9 degrees Celsius (66.02°F) on Jan. 1.

In France, where the night of Dec. 30-31 was the warmest since records began, temperatures climbed to nearly 25C in the southwest on New Year's Day while normally bustling European ski resorts were deserted due to a lack of snow.

The Weather Service in Germany, where temperatures of over 20 degrees Celsius was recorded, said the mild turn of the year had never been observed in the country since 1881.

A serious forecast for the whole winter is not yet possible but the Service predicts a slightly [milder?] overall winter this year compared with the previous three decades, said Florian Imbery, head of the agency's National Climate Monitoring Unit.

Czech Television reported some trees were starting to flower in private gardens while Switzerland's office of Meteorology and Climatology issued a pollen warning to allergy sufferers from early blooming hazel plants.

The temperature hit 25.1C at Bilbao airport in Spain's Basque country. People basked in the sun as they sat outside Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum or walked along the River Nervion.

"It always rains a lot here, it's very cold, and it's January, (but now) it feels like summer," said Bilbao resident Eusebio Folgeira, 81.

French tourist Joana Host said: "It's like nice weather for biking but we know it's like the planet is burning. So we're enjoying it but at the same time we're scared."

Scientists have not yet analysed the specific ways in which climate change affected the recent high temperatures, but January's warm weather spell fits into the longer-term trend of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.

Karsten Smid, a climate expert at Greenpeace Germany, said it was too late to make decisions to avoid such warm temperatures but measures should be taken to prevent even more drastic global warming.

"What's happening right now is exactly what climate scientists warned us about 10, 20 years ago, and that can no longer be prevented now," Smid said.

It follows another year of extreme weather events that scientists concluded were directly linked to global warming, including deadly heatwaves in Europe and India, and flooding in Pakistan.

"The record-breaking heat across Europe over the new year was made more likely to happen by human-caused climate change, just as climate change is now making every heatwave more likely and hotter," said Dr Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London.

Temperature spikes can also cause plants to start growing earlier in the year, making them vulnerable to being killed off by frosts, said Otto.

Empty slopes

"When millions of people across Europe are experiencing a heatwave in January it might be time to completely end our society's dependence on planet-heating fossil fuels," Greenpeace UK said.

French national weather agency Meteo France attributed the anomalous temperatures to a mass of warm air moving to Europe from subtropical zones.