Temperatures, Albania entered summer with above-normal levels, while heat gripped Europe

2026-07-13 07:21:00, Sociale CNA

Temperatures, Albania entered summer with above-normal levels, while heat

Albania was included in the band of above-normal temperatures that covered most of Europe in June, heralding a hotter start to the summer.

The map of air temperature anomalies, published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, places the Albanian territory mainly in the area of ??about 1 to 2 degrees Celsius above the June average for the period 1991–2020.

This is a rough visual estimate from the map's color scale and not a national statistic published separately for Albania.

The warming is more noticeable in the interior and northern areas of the country, while along the Adriatic and Ionian coasts the indicator appears more moderate.

But despite these fluctuations, no part of Albania clearly appears in the territory with temperatures below the climatic average.

The country's positioning on the map connects Albania to the same warm pattern that included Italy, the western part of the Balkans, and a wide segment of the Mediterranean.

The signal for Albania was part of a much broader European picture. The average temperature over European land in June reached 19.14 degrees Celsius, or 1.78 degrees above the 1991–2020 average.

This was the second hottest June recorded in Europe in the ERA5 database, after the record of 2019.

Eight of Europe's nine hottest Junes have been recorded since 2019, an indication of the accelerating warming trend. Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record, driven by an intense heatwave during the second half of the month.

The average temperature in the region was 3.06 degrees above normal, beating the record set just a year ago. France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Benelux countries recorded monthly anomalies of 3 to 5 degrees above average in some areas.

In most of Europe, monthly temperatures remained above normal, while cooler conditions occurred mainly in western Russia and parts of Turkey. Globally, June 2026 was the second warmest June in the history of Copernicus measurements.

The global average temperature reached 16.54 degrees Celsius, or 0.56 degrees above the average for the period 1991–2020. It was also about 1.39 degrees above the estimated pre-industrial level of 1850–1900.

The surface of the oceans outside the polar regions recorded the highest temperature ever recorded for a month of June. The average sea surface temperature reached 20.86 degrees Celsius, narrowly surpassing the record set in June 2024.

The Mediterranean Sea was also ranked among the regions with much warmer than normal waters, a development of direct importance for coastal countries like Albania.

The data shows that climate records are appearing at increasingly shorter intervals.

For Albania, the June map does not show anomalies as extreme as in Western Europe, but it places the country clearly on the warm side of the climate divide./ Monitor