Why temperature records are being not only broken but smashed

The simple logic is that you're much more likely to see a new record after 10 years of data than after 100 years."If someone beats a world record in high jump, you would expect them to beat it by one centimetre and not suddenly by 20, 30 centimetres and the same holds for the weather," Erich Fischer, professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, told BBC News."If the record is broken after 100 or 150 years of measurements, you would have probably expected it to be broken by a tenth of a degree and not suddenly by two degrees or three degrees," he added.But when a relatively rare weather system such as this week's heat dome comes around in a warming climate, the margin of record can be huge."We're going through a period of very rapid warming, particularly Europe" class="entity-link entity-location" data-entity-id="18280" data-entity-type="location">Western Europe… so if the same weather events we had in, say, the 1970s [happened again], it will not only be slightly warmer, but it will simply smash the record," said Prof Fischer.Even in 2026, this week's European heatwave is not an isolated case.Back in March, about 30% of active US weather stations set new Temperature Records for the time of year, according to Berkeley Earth, an independent US climate research group.The margin of records across the western US was "utterly absurd", its chief scientist Robert Rohde said.