Summer of 2024 was officially the hottest on record in Romania, minister says

Environment minister, Mircea Fechet, stated that the summer of 2024 was the hottest on record in the history of the National Meteorological Administration, the agency that measures climate phenomena in Romania.

Fechet mentioned that in addition to temperature records, increasingly intense extreme weather events are being registered.

“The general director of the National Meteorological Administration just told me that she has finished the calculations for the summer that just ended, and we can declare the summer of 2024 as the hottest summer in the history of ANM measurements, just as every month of this summer broke all records of the last 100 years, considering that we have been measuring for 120 years at the ANM,” the minister said.

Along with high temperatures and prolonged heatwaves, summer brought rains in Romania as well.

“Regarding precipitation, because I asked her about this as well, in the month of August, for the Dobrogea region, only in 2004 did we have more precipitation than we did this year, specifically 92 liters per square meter. This year, in August, we have had 85 liters per square meter,” Mircea Fechet stated on Sunday evening at Digi24, cited by News.ro.

The minister argued that the past summer highlights the need to address climate change.

“Climate change phenomena don’t just mean global warming. They also mean extreme weather events with increasing intensity and frequency. When the monthly average is 30 liters per square meter, and it rains 230 liters or 225 liters in 48 hours, as we had in Mangalia, you can imagine that this puts both local authorities and people in general in a difficult situation to manage,” Fechet said.

Romania suffered through several heatwaves this past summer, with temperatures reaching 42 degrees regularly.

(Photo source: Belish | Dreamstime.com)