Credit: Contains customized Copernicus Sentinel information (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Europe has actually started the brand-new year with an extreme winter season heatwave. The warm temperature levels and absence of snowfall in the Alps and the Pyrenees has actually left a number of ski resorts with little or no snow. The distinction in snow cover shows up in these Copernicus Sentinel -2 images caught in January 2022 compared to January 2023 which reveals the Flims, Laax, and Falera ski resorts in Switzerland.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, a high-pressure zone over the Mediterranean area and an Atlantic low-pressure system caused a strong southwest flux that brought warm air from northwest Africa to the middle latitudes. The air was additional warmed when passing the North Atlantic owing to higher-than-normal sea surface area temperature levels.
Copernicus Sentinel -2 satellite images caught in January 2022 reveal snowy SwissAlps Credit: Contains customized Copernicus Sentinel information (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
All this triggered record-breaking heat on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with temperature levels above 20 ° C observed in numerous European nations. The suddenly warm weather condition follows extremely heat in 2022 which saw the most popular summer season on record for Europe, according to the current Copernicus Climate Change Report released a couple of days back.
Copernicus Sentinel -2 satellite images caught in January 2023 reveals an absence of snow on the SwissAlps Credit: Contains customized Copernicus Sentinel information (2023), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
In the 2023 satellite image, snow is most likely to be discovered on the peaks above 2000 m, while the ski slopes under this elevation have actually needed to depend on synthetic snow this season. Artificial ski slopes can be viewed as thin, white strips in the bottom of the 2023 image.
Copernicus Sentinel– 2 is a two-satellite objective. Each satellite brings a high-resolution electronic camera that images Earth’s surface area in 13 spectral bands. Together they cover all Earth’s land surface areas, big islands, inland, and seaside waters every 5 days at the equator.
