Buenos Aires records hottest start to August in 117 years, Chile sees highs towards 40C and Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil also bake
Now should be South America’s bleak midwinter, but several parts of the continent are experiencing an extraordinary unseasonal heatwave that scientists believe offers a disturbing glimpse of a future of extreme weather.
Argentina’s riverside capital, Buenos Aires, this week recorded its hottest 1 August in 117 years.
Cindy Fernández, a weather bureau spokesperson, said her country was facing “a year of extreme heat”. “Winter temperatures are way off the scale – not only in the central region where Buenos Aires is but also in the northern regions bordering Bolivia and Paraguay where temperatures reached between 37C (98.6F) and 39C (102.2F) this week. Hundreds of miles to the west, in Chile, temperatures rose even higher, towards 40C.
“July was the planet’s hottest month since records began and the Andes are now experiencing their own thermal ordeal,” announced the Santiago-based newspaper La Tercera. “Although we’re in winter, Chile is living through a little hell of its very own.”
Raúl Cordero, a climate expert from the University of Santiago, told the newspaper that as far as temperatures and rainfall were concerned, “Chile’s winter is disappearing”.
“It’s not surprising that temperature records are being set all over the world. Climate change ensures these records are broken more and more frequently,” Cordero said.
Parts of Paraguay, Bolivia and southern Brazil have also been baking in what extreme weather-watcher Maximiliano Herrera called “brutal” temperatures of almost 39C. “
For at least five more days there won’t be any relief and we can’t rule out some 40s,” Herrera predicted on Twitter where he claimed the unusual winter heat was “rewriting all climatic books”.
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Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/03/south-america-winter-heatwave