Post by southathens on Nov 29, 2023 16:04:11 GMT -5
Could Cordoba in Andalusia, Spain lose in the near future its title as Europe's hottest summer mean max location to Sparta in the Evrotas Valley, Greece?
Below you can check Cordoba's summer mean maxes
And here is Sparta
So here is a hypothesis:
As you can already see Cordoba stands at 36.9C mean max for the hottest month, while Sparta stands at 36.0C.
However Cordoba's data come from a passive Stevenson Screen station while Sparta's come from a fan aspirated station. Here in Greece due to our extremely rich fan aspirated stations network from the National Observatory of Athens we have noticed that when we run parallel comparisons with passive SS stations, mean max temperatures are severely underestimated due to the fan aspiration!
Granted Sparta's data are only 15 years while Cordoba is full 30 years. But it is highly unlikely that Sparta's data will change significantly. If anything I would expect Sparta's summer mean maxes to rise slightly with all this crazy heating up we see year after year in Greece. Now usually the T differences in mean maxes between passive SS and fan aspirated stations can vary in Greece from 0.5 to almost 2C.
The most extreme example of these discrepancies is the city of Serres in North Greece where August is a full 2C warmer in the passive WMO station compared to the nearby fan aspirated WMO station in terms of mean maxes for the same period!!And we are talking same altitude and only 1km distance between the stations.
Now I am not saying that this would necessarily be the discrepancy in Sparta if we had a nearby passive SS station but in any case it could not be less than 0.5C. The most intriguing thing though is (and here is I believe the strongest argument as to why Cordoba could potentially lose to Sparta in the near future): the fact that the Evrotas Valley is a foehn winds superpower and so fucking complicated in terms of orography. Sparta is basically located in the interior of the Valley between Taygetus and Parnon mountains, completely cut out from the sea on all directions, some 30 km away from the shores. As the meltemi winds sweep Greece during the summer, Taygetus provides a constant hot NW foehn winds effect and Parnonas a constant NE foehn effect which strongly affects the interior of the valley. Mind you that the station in Sparta is not even in the hottest part of the valley!It is located just outside the city some 4km from the northern tip of Sparta which is much closer to Parnonas (thus a stronger foehn effect) and further inland (thus less effect from the sea breeze which comes from the south).
Now take a look at Cordoba. A completely flat plain for miles and miles. No significant orography no nothing. It's just so hot due to the constant heatwaves from Africa reaching the Andalusia landmass almost intact. Cordoba basically exhausts Andalusia's heat dynamic in terms of summer mean maxes due to its huge distance from the sea (I mean for South European standards anyway).
What do you guys think?
Below you can check Cordoba's summer mean maxes
And here is Sparta
So here is a hypothesis:
As you can already see Cordoba stands at 36.9C mean max for the hottest month, while Sparta stands at 36.0C.
However Cordoba's data come from a passive Stevenson Screen station while Sparta's come from a fan aspirated station. Here in Greece due to our extremely rich fan aspirated stations network from the National Observatory of Athens we have noticed that when we run parallel comparisons with passive SS stations, mean max temperatures are severely underestimated due to the fan aspiration!
Granted Sparta's data are only 15 years while Cordoba is full 30 years. But it is highly unlikely that Sparta's data will change significantly. If anything I would expect Sparta's summer mean maxes to rise slightly with all this crazy heating up we see year after year in Greece. Now usually the T differences in mean maxes between passive SS and fan aspirated stations can vary in Greece from 0.5 to almost 2C.
The most extreme example of these discrepancies is the city of Serres in North Greece where August is a full 2C warmer in the passive WMO station compared to the nearby fan aspirated WMO station in terms of mean maxes for the same period!!And we are talking same altitude and only 1km distance between the stations.
Now I am not saying that this would necessarily be the discrepancy in Sparta if we had a nearby passive SS station but in any case it could not be less than 0.5C. The most intriguing thing though is (and here is I believe the strongest argument as to why Cordoba could potentially lose to Sparta in the near future): the fact that the Evrotas Valley is a foehn winds superpower and so fucking complicated in terms of orography. Sparta is basically located in the interior of the Valley between Taygetus and Parnon mountains, completely cut out from the sea on all directions, some 30 km away from the shores. As the meltemi winds sweep Greece during the summer, Taygetus provides a constant hot NW foehn winds effect and Parnonas a constant NE foehn effect which strongly affects the interior of the valley. Mind you that the station in Sparta is not even in the hottest part of the valley!It is located just outside the city some 4km from the northern tip of Sparta which is much closer to Parnonas (thus a stronger foehn effect) and further inland (thus less effect from the sea breeze which comes from the south).
Now take a look at Cordoba. A completely flat plain for miles and miles. No significant orography no nothing. It's just so hot due to the constant heatwaves from Africa reaching the Andalusia landmass almost intact. Cordoba basically exhausts Andalusia's heat dynamic in terms of summer mean maxes due to its huge distance from the sea (I mean for South European standards anyway).
What do you guys think?
