What is the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe so far? What about the world?

Large parts of southern Europe have been hit by an intense and prolonged period of extreme heat, with temperatures expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius today in Spain. With these high temperatures come a host of issues, from wildfires, droughts and even heat-related deaths. Climate scientists and experts warn that extreme weather events such as heat waves are increasing rapidly as a result of climate change. As the heat continues to grip Europe this summer, temperature records are expected to be broken.

The current hottest temperature recorded in Europe was 48.8 degrees Celsius in the city of Syracuse on the Italian island of Sicily in 2021. The conditions forced the entire country to declare a state of emergency. A "heat dome" of high pressure spanning the Mediterranean created a domino effect of extreme weather events.

Greece previously held the unwanted record for 44 years. A temperature of 48 degrees Celsius was recorded in Athens in 1977. Other parts of Southern Europe have also recorded temperatures above the mid-40s Celsius level. Portugal faced 47.3C in 2003 in the small southeastern town of Amareleja. And Spain saw temperatures of 47.6C in 2021.

Last year was Spain's hottest since record-keeping began in 1961, and also the country's sixth driest, despite the presence of the La Niña weather phenomenon, which reduced global average temperatures. Iceland has the coldest record high temperature in Europe at 30.5C documented in 1939. Ireland has the second coldest record high temperature of 33.3C. This was recorded in 1887 and is the only high temperature record from the 19th century in Europe.

And as we enter an El Niño weather cycle combined with continued global warming, it looks like more heat records will be broken. The continent has warmed twice as much as the global average since the 1980s, according to a report published earlier this year by the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Copernicus network.

18 European countries have recorded their highest temperature since 2010, according to WMO data. Despite the frequency of new data over the past 13 years, it is not a quick process to verify it. WMO maintains a global archive of weather and climate extremes, which records data on temperature, pressure, precipitation, hail, dryness, wind, lightning and weather-related mortality.

Doing all this takes time, and the organization turns to the national weather service of the country where the record is thought to have been set, and a committee of experts reviews the information over six to nine months. It then recommends a finding to the WMO weather and climate extremes reporter, who either accepts the record for inclusion in the archive or rejects it.

For example, the European record temperature in Sicily was recorded in 2021 and was tentatively accepted, but was actually only confirmed this week by the WMO. The agency also looks at older records. The current record for the world's highest temperature is 56.7 C in Death Valley, USA on July 10, 1913. But for years it was believed to be 58 C supposedly recorded in Libya in 1922 until a WMO team conducted an investigation between 2010 and 2012.