Portugal’s highest recorded temperature was 47.4C, in 2003. Emergency services have issued a red alert through Sunday placing extra services such as medical staff and firefighters on standby.The World Meteorological Organisation says continental Europe’s record is 48C in Greece in 1977.
LISBON: Spain and Portugal faced another exceptionally hot day Saturday as a heat wave that has killed three people in Spain threatened to raise temperatures to record levels.
In Spain, heat warnings were also issued for 41 of the country’s 50 provinces as temperatures were expected to reach up to 44C.A number of “extreme” heat warnings have also been issued for Italy, Croatia and Switzerland.
The extremely high temperatures, caused by an influx of hot air from Africa, were also carrying loads of dust from the Sahara Desert.
Spain’s highest recorded temperature is 46.9C in Cordoba, a southern city, in July 2017.Temperatures in Spain and Portugal will remain above 40C at least until Sunday.
Temperatures built to around 45 degrees Celsius on Friday (local time) in many inland areas of Portugal, and were expected to peak at 47C in some places on Saturday.
The highest temperature recorded on Thursday, when the heat began to rise, was 45.2C near Abrantes, a town 150 kilometres north-east of the capital, Lisbon, the country’s weather agency IPMA said.
Some 400 firefighters and five water-dropping aircraft, meanwhile, were battling a wildfire in southern Portugal’s Algarve region.
Temperatures were being driven higher across the Iberian peninsula by a hot air mass moving northward from Africa, which is also bringing dust from the Sahara Desert, meteorologists said.
The United Kingdom’s Met Office weather service says July was the country’s third-warmest month in more than a century.
Meanwhile in Spain, media reports said two people died of heatstroke in the southeastern Murcia region, while a third – believed to be homeless – died in Barcelona.
