Record-breaking temperatures in countries across the world have dominated the headlines in recent years.
Last month, searing heat in North America resulted in a Canadian record temperature of 49.6C in Lytton, British Columbia.
Last year, Siberia experienced unprecedented temperatures of 38C inside the Arctic Circle.
In 2019, heat records were smashed across Europe. The UK, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg all registered new highs within hours of each other, a month or so after France had rewritten its own record books.
Individual temperature records remain highly contentious, with many older records receiving particular scrutiny from today’s meteorological community.
Concerns over instrumentation, location and observer reliability are among a raft of methodological issues cited by experts reviewing dubious records. Most notably, the world record 58C reported in 1922 in Al Azizia, Libya was invalidated by the World Meteorological Organization nine decades after it was recorded.
However, despite these concerns, aggregated historical patterns of commonly accepted national records reveal a startling pattern which underlines the global impact of climate change.
FT analysis of national temperature records compiled by weather historian Maximiliano Herrera shows that in 180 of 222 locations, the most recent records have been for highs rather than lows.
However, climate change is about more than just rising thermometers. Near-vertical lines on the temperature timeline reveal pendulous swings between extreme highs and lows.
Paraguay and Chile have both recorded all-time heat and cold this century, while just three years and six months separated the UAE registering a record-setting high of 51.8C in July 2017 and a record low of minus 2C in January this year. In fact, the country subsequently registered a record-equalling high this June, meaning it has experienced record levels of heat and cold within six months of the same calendar year.
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