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Season 1996

Every heat event the pipeline tracked between 1996-05-01 and 1996-09-30, with how each one grew, peaked and moved. Anomalies are against the 1991–2020 baseline.

Season at a glance

Events tracked: 13
Total heat burden: 49.20 Mkm²·days
Longest: 17days (#2)
Hottest: +13.8°C (#4)
With a heat dome: 8of 13 events

A heat dome is the stricter object: a tracked heat event with a closed 500 hPa anticyclone whose influence cap overlies it, after Loikith et al. (2026). Most heatwaves are not domes, so the label is a finding and not a synonym.

ERA5 daily maximum 2 m temperature over land, against the 1991–2020 climatology (p90 in a centred 15-day window). A heatwave cell is Tx above p90 on at least 3 consecutive days.

When the events ran

Overlapping bars are concurrent events in different places, not one event counted twice: each is a separately labelled cluster of contiguous heatwave cells.

How each event evolved

Event #2 — 1996-05-02 → 1996-05-18 17 dayshigh on 7/17 d only

peak 1.86 M km² on 1996-05-11 · max +12.9 °C · mean +8.9 °C · burden 12.59 M km²·d · drift 1113 km (55.5 N 44.5 E → 51.3 N 29.3 E)

Event #8 — 1996-07-01 → 1996-07-17 17 daysheat dome · 10/17 d · Z500 +213 m

peak 1.73 M km² on 1996-07-10 · max +12.2 °C · mean +7.1 °C · burden 11.41 M km²·d · drift 876 km (40.0 N 34.9 E → 44.6 N 43.5 E)

Event #4 — 1996-06-04 → 1996-06-14 11 daysheat dome · 8/11 d · Z500 +193 m

peak 1.60 M km² on 1996-06-08 · max +13.8 °C · mean +7.5 °C · burden 8.11 M km²·d · drift 1416 km (43.2 N -6.1 E → 42.5 N 11.3 E)

Event #13 — 1996-08-26 → 1996-09-04 10 dayshigh on 5/10 d only

peak 1.15 M km² on 1996-09-01 · max +9.8 °C · mean +7.1 °C · burden 5.10 M km²·d · drift 932 km (62.7 N 27.9 E → 56.4 N 38.9 E)

Event #9 — 1996-08-06 → 1996-08-15 10 daysheat dome · 9/10 d · Z500 +210 m

peak 642k km² on 1996-08-13 · max +11.9 °C · mean +7.2 °C · burden 3.32 M km²·d · drift 563 km (67.7 N 18.4 E → 67.1 N 31.5 E)

Event #10 — 1996-08-14 → 1996-08-25 12 daysheat dome · 11/12 d · Z500 +198 m

peak 752k km² on 1996-08-21 · max +8.8 °C · mean +6.1 °C · burden 3.18 M km²·d · drift 467 km (62.1 N 30.0 E → 61.0 N 21.5 E)

Event #12 — 1996-08-16 → 1996-08-25 10 daysheat dome · 9/10 d · Z500 +198 m

peak 391k km² on 1996-08-21 · max +10.3 °C · mean +6.5 °C · burden 1.58 M km²·d · drift 725 km (59.9 N 18.8 E → 62.1 N 6.1 E)

Event #3 — 1996-05-18 → 1996-05-23 6 daysheat dome · 6/6 d · Z500 +138 m

peak 354k km² on 1996-05-20 · max +12.4 °C · mean +7.9 °C · burden 1.08 M km²·d · drift 491 km (45.4 N 25.2 E → 41.0 N 25.3 E)

Event #1 — 1996-05-01 → 1996-05-09 9 dayshigh on 2/9 d only

peak 153k km² on 1996-05-07 · max +11.7 °C · mean +6.3 °C · burden 948k km²·d · drift 349 km (39.2 N 37.3 E → 36.7 N 34.8 E)

Event #7 — 1996-06-23 → 1996-06-28 6 daysheat dome · 5/6 d · Z500 +134 m

peak 167k km² on 1996-06-26 · max +9.9 °C · mean +5.4 °C · burden 618k km²·d · drift 132 km (39.5 N 33.8 E → 38.9 N 35.1 E)

Event #5 — 1996-06-11 → 1996-06-16 6 dayshigh on 2/6 d only

peak 141k km² on 1996-06-14 · max +11.5 °C · mean +7.5 °C · burden 503k km²·d · drift 218 km (41.4 N -6.1 E → 43.3 N -6.4 E)

Event #11 — 1996-08-15 → 1996-08-20 6 daysheat dome · 4/6 d · Z500 +173 m

peak 131k km² on 1996-08-18 · max +10.1 °C · mean +6.2 °C · burden 422k km²·d · drift 157 km (54.5 N -2.4 E → 53.5 N -0.8 E)

Event #6 — 1996-06-14 → 1996-06-19 6 dayshigh on 2/6 d only

peak 105k km² on 1996-06-16 · max +10.1 °C · mean +6.8 °C · burden 363k km²·d · drift 318 km (45.4 N -1.9 E → 48.1 N -1.0 E)

Filled area is the event footprint in km² (left axis); the solid line is the peak anomaly inside it and the dashed line the mean (right axis). The small panel is the centroid path, circles sized by area and the ring marking day one. Drift is the straight-line start-to-end distance, so a dome that wandered and returned reports a small number.

Pipeline figures, 1996