ESA (European Space Agency) has recently published a new image that reports the data of theWave of anomalous heat which is hitting a large part of Europe in these days, with temperatures detected by the Sentinel-3 satellite of the Copernicus program on June 29 that reach it 45 ° C in Rome, 49 ° C in Foggia until the record of Sevillein Spain, where they were recorded 54 ° C. But is it possible to have such high temperatures? Yes, but it’s not like you think.
As reported also by the European Space Agency, the image reports the Earth surface temperature And Not air temperaturewhich is the one we understand normally when we talk about “temperature in a given city”. It is therefore not the temperature that we perceive, but of that of the soil, obtained from the radiation emitted by the surface of the earth, and which is generally higher Compared to that of the air (anyone who has ever walked on the asphalt has this difference).
The map was reconstructed thanks to a mosaic of five orbital passages superimposed on the morning of June 29, 2025: the temperatures, therefore, were not recorded through physical thermometersbut the data were reconstructed from the infrared rays emitted by the soil and detected by Sentinel-3. So those temperatures are real, but measure something slightly different from our “standard” concept of temperature.
Among other things, the image also shows the highly high surface temperatures of the Mediterranean Seawhich in recent days has shown exceptional anomalies of beyond 5 ° C compared to the seasonal average. Temperatures that contributed to the events of bad weather along the Alpine arc yesterday.
In any case, the air temperatures remain also abnormal: throughout Western Europe, a heat wave guided by a high pressure system is underway, called journalistically “Pluto anticyclone” which is actually a promontory of the African anticyclone stretched on central Europe acts as a sort of “block”, trapping the air warm and dry and amplifying temperatures over time. Precisely this phenomenon is bringing air temperatures beyond seasonal averages, with a greater risk of fires and events of extreme bad weather.
