Austria set a new temperature record on Tuesday with 41C measured in Vienna, the national weather agency said. The reading was made in Stammersdorf in the northeast of the capital, GeoSphere Austria said in a statement, exceeding the 40.8C which were measured earlier in the day. The measurements break the previous record of 40.5 degrees on August 8, 2013, at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg in eastern Austria. The spike comes during an exceptional spell of hot weather and low rainfall which have seen several local records broken. Austria had suffered its fourth-warmest July on record and “at some measuring stations, the precipitation deficit reached 90 percent”, the weather agency said. Apricots have begun ripening roughly 20 days earlier than the average observed over the 1961–1991 period, illustrating the impact of global warming on crops, the agency said. Agriculture minister Norbert Totschnig has warned it was becoming “increasingly difficult” for farmers to feed their animals as the drought dries up pastures. In Vienna, restaurant owner Nasir Dis, 60, told AFP that “very few” people were coming to eat and called the weather “a catastrophe”. “We just wait for this heat to be over. What can we do? Nothing... No one wants to eat or drink anything. Everyone just wants to barricade themselves at home,” he said. In neighbouring Slovakia, the capital Bratislava recorded its highest temperature ever at 40.8C on Tuesday, breaking the record set the previous day of 39.9C, according to the weather service. Climate change has intensified a drought across Europe this summer, with extreme heat driving the exceptionally dry conditions, according to experts.
