Temperatures for the start of January have reached an all-time high in a number of countries across Europe.
National records have fallen in eight countries — Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark and Belarus — while regional records were broken in Germany, France and Ukraine.
Warsaw, Poland, saw 18.9C (66F) on Sunday while Bilbao, Spain, was 25.1C — more than 10C above average — the equivalent to the average in July.
Parts of Catalonia including Barcelona are subject to restrictions on water use.
Just days earlier, the UK, Ireland, France and Spain declared 2022 their hottest year on record.
Experts said the extreme heat was almost certainly linked to climate change.
Temperature records are usually broken by a few fractions of a degree, but the new record was Warsaw hit 5.1C above the previous high set in 1993.
“The temperatures observed in Europe are staggering,” Scott Duncan, a meteorologist, said.
“We had a very warm new year last year but this blows that out of the water. We observed longstanding records broken by large margins across several countries.”
In Brest, Belarus, temperatures would normally be around 0°C at this time of year but reached a balmy 15.9°C on New Year’s Day, eclipsing its previous January record by a considerable margin.
In Switzerland, temperatures hit 20C, and the warm weather has affected ski resorts across the Alps, including Austria which have seen a snow shortage.
More than half of ski slopes in France have been forced to close due to unseasonably mild weather and rain, making for a disappointing ski season.
The driving force behind this exceptional heat was a warm air mass from the west coast of Africa, which moved across Europe, bringing unseasonably warm conditions.
Rosie Oakes, a Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “What’s noteworthy about this event is how widespread it is as well as the amount previous records have been exceeded by.
"Climate models projects that both the frequency and intensity of these warm weather events will increase in the future, not just in the summer but in the winter too.”
The mild European weather comes as North America faces more severe storms, days after a deadly winter cold snap left more than 60 dead.
Across the UK a continued wet and windy outlook is expected at least through the first part of January.
Despite the unsettled weather this week, it will be on the mild side with temperatures yesterday ranging from 5C to a high of 14C forecast in the capital. But temperatures will drop slightly closer to the seasonal average into the week end.
