Every heat event the pipeline tracked between 2002-05-01 and 2002-09-30, with how each one grew, peaked and moved. Anomalies are against the 1991–2020 baseline.
Season at a glance
Events tracked
18
Total heat burden
64.09 Mkm²·days
Longest
27days (#13)
Hottest
+15.5°C (#3)
With a heat dome
5of 18 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 #13 — 2002-08-09 → 2002-09-04 27 dayshigh on 13/27 d only
peak 1.04 M km² on 2002-08-30 · max +13.7 °C · mean +7.0 °C · burden 14.74 M km²·d · drift 1420 km (63.3 N 22.5 E → 51.2 N 30.2 E)
Event #8 — 2002-07-03 → 2002-07-27 25 daysheat dome · 14/25 d · Z500 +214 m
peak 915k km² on 2002-07-09 · max +12.3 °C · mean +6.8 °C · burden 9.92 M km²·d · drift 758 km (53.6 N 34.5 E → 57.3 N 44.7 E)
Event #7 — 2002-06-13 → 2002-06-27 15 daysheat dome · 11/15 d · Z500 +233 m
peak 997k km² on 2002-06-19 · max +13.5 °C · mean +7.5 °C · burden 7.00 M km²·d · drift 533 km (45.1 N 4.4 E → 43.3 N 10.5 E)
Event #1 — 2002-05-01 → 2002-05-13 13 dayshigh on 6/12 d only
peak 1.39 M km² on 2002-05-03 · max +14.1 °C · mean +8.6 °C · burden 5.89 M km²·d · drift 1479 km (62.8 N 37.6 E → 52.5 N 21.6 E)
Event #11 — 2002-07-28 → 2002-08-03 7 daysheat dome · 4/7 d · Z500 +221 m
peak 1.40 M km² on 2002-07-31 · max +11.1 °C · mean +6.7 °C · burden 5.85 M km²·d · drift 500 km (52.3 N 31.4 E → 52.8 N 38.8 E)
Event #17 — 2002-09-03 → 2002-09-10 8 dayshigh on 3/8 d only
peak 871k km² on 2002-09-07 · max +10.1 °C · mean +6.7 °C · burden 4.53 M km²·d · drift 313 km (57.8 N 24.7 E → 55.0 N 23.8 E)
Event #4 — 2002-06-01 → 2002-06-13 13 daysheat dome · 9/13 d · Z500 +243 m
peak 430k km² on 2002-06-10 · max +15.4 °C · mean +9.6 °C · burden 3.46 M km²·d · drift 632 km (62.5 N 17.8 E → 65.6 N 28.7 E)
Event #18 — 2002-09-22 → 2002-09-30 9 dayshigh on 3/9 d only
peak 499k km² on 2002-09-25 · max +11.4 °C · mean +6.3 °C · burden 2.47 M km²·d · drift 306 km (36.1 N 43.9 E → 38.8 N 43.1 E)
Event #3 — 2002-05-25 → 2002-06-02 9 dayshigh on 4/9 d only
peak 491k km² on 2002-05-30 · max +15.5 °C · mean +9.8 °C · burden 2.07 M km²·d · drift 871 km (69.6 N 20.7 E → 62.7 N 29.8 E)
Event #16 — 2002-09-02 → 2002-09-15 14 dayshigh on 4/14 d only
peak 302k km² on 2002-09-09 · max +10.3 °C · mean +6.0 °C · burden 1.86 M km²·d · drift 512 km (57.6 N 16.1 E → 59.9 N 8.4 E)
Event #5 — 2002-06-07 → 2002-06-11 5 dayshigh on 2/5 d only
peak 482k km² on 2002-06-09 · max +11.6 °C · mean +6.5 °C · burden 1.62 M km²·d · drift 600 km (38.6 N 30.6 E → 37.9 N 37.4 E)
Event #12 — 2002-08-07 → 2002-08-14 8 dayshigh on 1/8 d only
peak 220k km² on 2002-08-10 · max +10.7 °C · mean +6.9 °C · burden 1.01 M km²·d · drift 303 km (64.5 N 16.1 E → 61.9 N 17.3 E)
Event #15 — 2002-08-15 → 2002-08-27 13 dayshigh on 2/13 d only
peak 174k km² on 2002-08-18 · max +9.4 °C · mean +6.3 °C · burden 864k km²·d · drift 823 km (50.3 N 3.1 E → 57.0 N 8.5 E)
Event #14 — 2002-08-10 → 2002-08-17 8 dayshigh on 1/8 d only
peak 200k km² on 2002-08-15 · max +8.6 °C · mean +6.5 °C · burden 853k km²·d · drift 262 km (57.1 N 22.2 E → 54.7 N 21.5 E)
Event #6 — 2002-06-12 → 2002-06-18 7 dayshigh on 3/7 d only
peak 184k km² on 2002-06-16 · max +10.5 °C · mean +7.2 °C · burden 725k km²·d · drift 213 km (42.1 N -4.1 E → 40.6 N -2.4 E)
Event #9 — 2002-07-17 → 2002-07-22 6 daysno overlying high
peak 136k km² on 2002-07-19 · max +5.7 °C · mean +3.8 °C · burden 456k km²·d · drift 538 km (35.8 N 36.6 E → 35.6 N 42.5 E)
Event #10 — 2002-07-27 → 2002-08-01 6 dayshigh on 3/6 d only
peak 123k km² on 2002-07-29 · max +10.1 °C · mean +6.8 °C · burden 399k km²·d · drift 914 km (48.3 N 4.1 E → 56.0 N 8.9 E)
Event #2 — 2002-05-19 → 2002-05-24 6 daysheat dome · 4/6 d · Z500 +147 m
peak 116k km² on 2002-05-22 · max +14.2 °C · mean +9.4 °C · burden 370k km²·d · drift 98 km (62.5 N 8.1 E → 61.7 N 7.3 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.