Why is it hotter in SW France than Southern Spain at the moment?

[deeahgwitch]

I’m just wondering why it is much warmer in South West France than the much closer to the Equator, Southern Spain ?

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

As someone who lives in southern Spain and is currently melting, I’m just glad I’m not in SW France at the moment. It’s bad enough here!

Southwest France is currently hotter than Southern Spain because a strong "heat dome" of hot air drawn from the Sahara is locked over central and western Europe by a high-pressure system. This system acts like a lid, bringing prolonged sunshine and trapping the rising heat. Furthermore, warm air moving from Northern Spain compresses and heats up significantly as it descends into Southwestern France—a meteorological phenomenon known as the Föhn effect. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The combination of trapped high pressure and this compressional heating is pushing temperatures in places like Bordeaux to roughly 39°C to 41°C, outpacing Southern Spain, which is receiving more of a cooling influence from Atlantic and Mediterranean sea breezes.

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SW France gets surprisingly hot. It’s not the first time this has happened.

Same reason that places in the UK have been hotter than the Southern Spanish coast this week.

There have been multiple explanations in the media .

@deeahgwitch

A lot of whether it's warm or cold somewhere often depends on where the air has come from (Arctic/Africa etc), not how near the equator you are.

FWIW I'm in south west France, we've been above 41C (yesterday, ) and that's because we've got air of a generally southerly origin (so warm to start with) that has been trapped gently circulating in a high pressure system. One of the characteristics of a high pressure system is the air in it decends, gets compressed on the way and warms up - it's called "subsidence" in the Met world.

@HotHotter 's post mentioned the Fohn effect but I'm not sure at all that's involved here - to get classic Fohn you needs a moisture laden wind blowing over range of mountains (in our case the Pyrennees, ) and I'm not sure we've got that now, though when we do get it can give some really impressive short lived rises in temperatures, but not normally in summer.

Thank you all 💐