Climate change: Portugal issues highest heat alert
July 12, 2022, 9:07 am

Climate change: Portugal issues highest heat alert

Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira - Photo. Pixabay

Portugal has issued a "red warning," the highest on the scale, with hot and dry weather forecast for the coming days, the Xinhua reported.

As of Tuesday (July 12), Portugal will register "very high values of maximum temperature," with a large part of it expected to reach a maximum above 40 degrees Celsius during the next days, the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) said Monday in a statement.

Portugal on Monday (July 11) entered a "contingency situation" for five days, decreed by the government to allow the civil protection authority to use restrictive measures to prevent and combat outbreaks of forest fires.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa on Monday warned residents of the risk of fires in hot weather in a statement to the press during a visit to the Emergency Protection and Relief Unit in the city of Coimbra in central Portugal.

He appealed to residents in rural areas affected by the heatwave not to "work with agricultural machinery."

Heatwaves are most common in summer when high pressure develops across an area - Pic. Pixabay

Costa said: “The country can have all the means in the world, but these weather conditions, with extreme temperatures, extreme drought, with voluminous fuel and excellent conditions for burning, any carelessness immediately triggers a huge fire.”

High temperatures are forecast for the regions of Alentejo, where 46 degrees Celsius can be recorded, in Tagus Valley with 45 degrees Celsius, and in the northeast province of Tras-os-Montes between 40 and 44 degrees Celsius, according to the IPMA.

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It warned that "wind intensity will be weak to moderate," with relative humidity "less than 20 percent in vast areas of the interior" of the country.

It said: "This very hot weather situation results from the circulation of a very hot and dry air mass, originating in North Africa, which will persist until the 15th of July, with temperature values above or much above average, except the coast.”

Source: xinhua

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