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Continental Europe has new hottest day on record at nearly 120°F in Sicily
Europe officially has a new record temperature – 119.8°F – reached on Aug. 11, 2021. The extreme heat, recorded on the Italian island of Sicily, has been deemed the new record temperature for continental Europe by the World Meteorological Organization.
Previously, the record temperature for the continent was 118.4°F, recorded in Athens and Elefsina, Greece, on July 10, 1977.
But in 2021, an automated weather station in Syracuse, Sicily, reached nearly 120°F, prompting a panel of international atmospheric scientists to try and verify the temperature.
August is usually the hottest month for Syracuse but the average temp is 80.1°F, according to climate data. The coldest month is February, when temperatures drop to a mild 52.3°F, on average.
The 120°F day recorded in 2021 is the highest recorded for continental Europe, which includes parts of Asia like Turkey and Syria, according to WMO.
Professor Randall Cerveny, rapporteur of climate and weather extremes for WMO, said investigations like this are lengthy to ensure WMO is properly measuring global temperatures.
“Beyond that, this investigation demonstrates the alarming tendency for continuing high temperature records to be set in specific regions of the world,” Cerveny said.
The previous high temperature recorded in Greece was based on official government sources, but has not been verified by WMO, the organization says.
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“The extremes presented before the WMO for adjudication are ‘snapshots’ of our current climate. It is possible, indeed likely, that greater extremes will occur across Europe in the future. When such observations are made, new WMO evaluation committees will be formed to adjudicate such observations as extremes,” said Cerveny.
The findings were published in the International Journal of Climatology as well as WMO’s Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes, naming Sicily as the location for the hottest temperature ever recorded in continental Europe.
In the region that includes other parts of Europe and the Middle East, Tirat Tsvi, Israel saw the hottest day on record – 129°F in 1942, the archive shows.
The highest temperature ever recorded was in 1913, when Furnace Creek, California – in Death Valley – reached 134°F. The lowest temperature ever recorded was -128.6°F in Vostok, Antarctica, in 1912.
The committee that determined the new high temperature is also looking at other weather phenomena, like whether or not Tropical Cyclone Freddy broke a record in 2023 for longest tropical cyclone.
The Earth saw its hottest year ever in 2023, with a global average temperature of 14.98°C, or 58.96°F, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate agency. That is 0.17 degrees Celsius higher than 2016, which previously broke the record of highest global average temperature.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
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