Is 41.9°C the new normal for Czech summers?
Over the past weekend, Czechia experienced an extreme heatwave that broke all previous records, with the highest temperature ever measured on its territory reaching 41.9°C. But was this just an isolated weather event, or a glimpse of what summers in Central Europe will increasingly look like in the future? If the latter is true, how do we adapt to steadily rising temperatures, what does this mean for cities and daily life, and is there any realistic chance that global warming could still be slowed or even stopped?
Pavel Zahradníček, climatologist from the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences – CzechGlobe, says heatwaves in themselves are nothing new. However, what made last weekend's heatwave so intense were the exceptionally high temperatures it brought.
“What happened was that warm air was drawn in from Africa through a southerly airflow. What is unusual, however, is that this air is becoming increasingly warmer, which is why we have experienced such extreme temperatures. The same hot air mass would have arrived 50, 100, or even 200 years ago, but it simply would not have been as intense as it is today.”
Climatologists have observed an increase in the number of hot days over the past six decades. However, an even greater problem than the days themselves is the nights.
“Over the past 60 years, average temperatures have risen by around 2 to 2.3 degrees Celsius, but the number of heatwaves has tripled. At the same time, hot nights are becoming an even more serious phenomenon. If people cannot sleep because their homes remain overheated throughout the night, the impact on human health is much greater than that of hot days alone.”
Between 1961 and 1990, for example, only seven tropical nights were recorded in central Prague, when temperatures remained above 20 degrees Celsius overnight. Between 1991 and 2025, Prague experienced 165 tropical nights.
“If temperatures rise by another two degrees, we can expect the number of hot days to increase roughly threefold again by the end of the century. Under a more moderate emissions scenario, the increase could still be around four times higher than it is today. In other words, what we currently consider a record number of hot days in a given year could become the new annual norm, with temperature records continuing to climb.”
To cope with our steadily warming climate, adaptation measures are becoming essential in both cities and rural areas. These need to be considered already during the design and renovation of buildings.
“The first step is the architectural design itself—how the building is constructed. There are materials that absorb less heat, good insulation helps, and external window shutters can also reduce indoor temperatures to some extent. Altogether, these measures can lower indoor temperatures by about two degrees Celsius. So instead of 30 degrees in the top floor of a building, you might have 28. That's certainly an improvement, but it's still far too hot.”
According to Zahradníček, this means that air conditioning units will increasingly be necessary.
“In many other countries they are already standard, and we will have to install them here as well. We also need to prepare for the additional strain this will place on the energy system. According to figures I read from Amper Meteo, which monitors these trends, electricity consumption is currently 16.5 percent higher than it was just two weeks ago, when temperatures were typical for summer and there was no need for air conditioning. That represents a huge increase in electricity demand caused by air conditioning, and, of course, that extra energy has to be generated somewhere.”
So how does meteorologist and climatologist Pavel Zahradníček see the future? Is the process of global warming irreversible, leaving us with no option but to adapt to increasingly hotter days, or is there still hope that the situation will gradually improve?
“We currently have around 32 climate development scenarios for the future, and they all agree that temperatures will continue to rise until around 2050. So until that year, we need to adapt, because we are not able to reverse the problem by then – but what we do now can influence what happens after 2050. A realistic scenario is that by the end of the century, temperatures will increase by about 2.5°C to 3°C compared to today. I definitely do not support the view that “we are all going to burn and nothing can be done.” That is very far from my way of thinking. I assume the realistic scenario is that temperatures will continue to rise in some way, and after 2050 they will start to level off. But even that will bring significant economic impacts.”
As the data shows, the direction of change is already clear: hotter days, warmer nights, and more frequent extremes are becoming the new normal. It seems the key question now is not only how much the climate will warm, but how societies choose to respond in time.
