“Hottest climate lie of the year” – confusion about 48 degrees of heat in rape in Italy: Ballermann holidaymakers from Germany are threatened with detention

Heated discussions over coverage of possible new record temperatures in Europe over the weekend: German media worsened reports after being met with malice and ridicule on social media and from “alternative media” over an alleged mistake. That even went as far as accusations that the media would suddenly use absurd values ​​​​to fuel climate panic. In fact, the original reports were not based on incorrect values, but on older information. Those who joked about it, on the other hand, were dead wrong.

That has been reported

The “Mirror” headlined that “up to 48 degrees in southern Europe” is expected, “48 degrees could be reached in Italy in the coming days,” the Tagesschau wrote. T-online also picked up the song: “Almost 50 degrees on holiday island – heat record approaching”. What was meant in the reports: the air temperature, measured as standard at a height of two meters above the ground. The source for the article was a communication from the European Space Agency ESA. This message was also widely disseminated to make the climate crisis clear. Green Party leader Ricarda Lang tweeted the article, writing: “(…) up to 48 degrees expected. This heat is endangering our health. Anyone who still claims you can take your time when it comes to climate protection is ignoring the reality.”

That’s where the confusion started

The original ESA text stated that “Europe is facing a major heat wave, with temperatures expected to reach 48 degrees on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia”. A detail of this will become important later on. But then things got confusing: ESA also explained in the text how the temperature of sea and land surfaces is measured with radiometers from the two Sentinel-3 satellites. An impressive map also showed these temperatures in Europe on the earth’s surface: 46 degrees in Rome. Explanation: “This satellite instrument measures the actual amount of energy radiated by the Earth.” The temperature shown represents that of the land surface, which is higher than the air temperature.

Mood with soil temperature

That was the misconception: users assumed that the media and those spreading the Esa message would set the mood with the ground temperature. The ground regularly heats up much more than the air, even in Germany asphalt softens in the scorching sun, which starts around 50 degrees. Staying above such hot ground can certainly be torture. But of course it is something completely different from such a high air temperature. It would be embarrassing to confuse the two values.

In fact, users circulated comparisons of the map showing ground temperatures on the one hand and significantly lower air temperatures on the other. A soil temperature of 48 degrees would not be a record in Europe, and there is no official record for soil temperatures yet. Therefore, the value of 48 degrees ground temperature means nothing to anyone, it is not a suitable argument to point out the dangers of climate change.

Those were the reactions

Jörg Kachelmann criticized on Twitter that it was “grit to the mill of climate change deniers” and “unscientific nonsense” to compare the temperatures on the Earth’s surface with the air temperature.

“Spiegel” and “Tagesschau” got too hot themselves, they edited their lyrics. But they confirmed the impression that there is a problem with the 48 degrees.

The Tagesschau wrote that “48 degrees can be reached on the ground in Italy in the coming days”, at “Spiegel” the message was now “up to 48 degrees ground temperature expected in southern Europe” and pointed to the change. They made the lyrics worse. In the case of the “Mirror”, there was also the fact that the text had previously mixed up the 48 degrees with other values ​​from the ESA that actually referred to soil values: the forecast of 48 degrees air temperature in Sicily with measured 46 degrees ground temperature in Rome and 47 in Seville. Ricarda Lang deleted her tweet without comment.

No climate lie

Then the lurid headline about the “hottest climate lie of the year” appeared. So it wrote the new website of the former “Bild” editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, which is largely supported by a billionaire. But the editors understood even less here: the media reported that up to 48 degrees had been measured in Sicily, the site claimed – it was a forecast. In addition, the portal that the ESA explains in the tweet spread that the reported temperatures relate to the ground. That was never there, but was the – wrong – interpretation.

Hence the 48 degrees

The Esa report confused ground and air temperatures: the 48 degrees was actually about the expected air temperature in Sicily, while all other values ​​in the text referred to ground values ​​measured by the satellites. Esa probably saw for himself what caused this confusion and has changed the text minimally: “Air” has been added for “Temperatures up to 48 degrees” for clarification.

Prediction was from Monday

However, one could have opened in advance. Esa had put a link on her website to the fact that temperatures of up to 48 degrees were expected. The source for this statement was not Esa herself, but an article in the English «Guardian». And there Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Association, said something like this: After there were already 48.8 degrees in Sicily in 2021, we were able to get close to the record. Now there are temperatures above 40 or above 45 degrees.

That’s the problem with the 48 degrees, though: Italy’s best-known meteorologist has even said that air temperatures could reach record highs. However, the article in The Guardian appeared at 4 p.m. on Monday. The prediction that Esa had distributed on Thursday and that the media partly picked up on Friday, came from Monday. That’s actually a problem, it could have changed significantly since then. And “La Stampa” read that values ​​​​up to 48 degrees were expected for last Wednesday. Such high temperatures were not measured at all.

The fact that these values ​​don’t appear in current weather forecasts doesn’t necessarily mean that individual stations won’t come close to them. This is evident from the example of the previous record holder: When the record value of 48.8 degrees was measured in Floridia on Sicily on August 11, 2021, it was 14 degrees cooler at another measuring point on the island.

And the heat wave, with values ​​well above 40 degrees, is not over yet: Mercalli had already announced that it would last ten days. This has been confirmed: only in the north of Italy it will be slightly quieter, in the center and south of Italy it will continue.

But Mercalli also told Agenzia Italia that the issue of a new record in Italy is not so central: the real news is that new records have been set worldwide: “On four consecutive days between July 3 and 6, we broke all global average temperature records. They are the four hottest days ever recorded on planet Earth.”

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