I'm not in Europe, but I understand that it's fairly common in some southern areas, but overall much less common then the US. Air conditioning is apparently more common for offices and stores than for residences.
Rolling out more air conditioning in Europe may not be a terrible thing from the standpoint of electricity providers. As things stand, unlike the US, where peak electricity demand is in the summer (due to air conditioning), Europe's peak electricity demand is in winter, due to electricity-driven heating. Having more-even seasonal demand probably makes life easier for the grid.
All that being said, I believe that the article is talking about unseasonably warm temperatures for October -- which is not that hot -- not so much extremely hot summer temperatures. This may not be a "roll out air conditioning" sort of thing.
30 planned today in the north of France, it was already 25 at 12h, I dare you to say it’s not that hot, especially for freaking October. Those aren’t so bad in rural areas but in cities it tends to be quickly suffocating.
That's 86°F. That's certainly warm, but I do 86°F without an air conditioner, though I'll probably have a fan on. I could see someone using an air conditioner then, sure, but that's not an extreme "I must have an air conditioner" temperature, either.
especially for freaking October.
That's my point. It's warm for the season, but being warm for the season isn't what drives air conditioner use, but being warm in absolute terms.
Go back to summer a couple years ago, and that's the kind of thing that will drive air conditioner rollouts:
Temperatures reached catastrophic levels in France in 2019, when Paris saw a record 42.6° C in July. According to the French Ministry of Health, 567 people died during a heatwave between June 24 and July 7 that year. A second heatwave that summer claimed the lives of another 868 people.
That's 108°F. That's the kind of thing that'll make air conditioners important, rather than a warm fall.
1 in 8 homes was the last data I saw but it feels every day like a rarity. Some trains, big market stores, and restaurants have it but not to a degree you could count on it.
In Amsterdam/The Netherlands it's basically non existent in any of the older buildings. In newer construction it's becoming more common.
We live in in a an office building that I would guess was built some time in the last 15-20 years that has since been turned into apartments and we have some kind of radiant floor cooling/heating. It's not super strong but it's a hell of a lot better than my girlfriend's old ~1800s building with south facing windows. That little apartment turned into an oven in the summer.
Ah that's pretty cool. Fortunately we don't have that issue in our new place but I'd definitely keep that in mind if we moved somewhere not so ideal in the future
I didn’t do a ton of research but that seems pretty warm for October. I’d expect the average to be way lower (12° for the red dots maybe) with an occasional warm day or two.
I like this site for checking the climate in specific regions. This shows 13° as the average day-time temperature in october. If the DWD forecast is to be believed Lübeck might get up to 18-20° in the coming one and a half weeks. So while it’s not the mid 20s it’s still way above average.
On the other hand, for sure make the best of it and keep the grill out. Looks like fantastic weather for it!
Talk for yourself. The last week and the coming week here in Switzerland are exactly what the article is describing. Around half the days were 24°+ and even the lower days are around 17-18°. That’s definitely not usual for late September and early October.
Heat wave isn’t +30°C. This is what climate change deniers want people to think.
A heat wave is when the temperature are higher on a certain amount of time. According to the IPCC, it’s “a period of abnormally hot weather, often defined with reference to a relative temperature threshold, lasting from two days to months”, and according to the Heat Wave Duration, and to the World Meteorological Organization, it’s “five or more consecutive days during which the daily maximum temperature surpasses the average maximum temperature by 5 °C (9 °F) or more”.
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