The new year has started with a historic heatwave affecting Europe, with many countries observing the warmest temperature on record for 1 January.
Hundreds of temperature records have been broken and summer-like temperatures have prevailed in numerous cities across the continent.
This image, acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on 1 January 2023, shows Altdorf, a Swiss town where the temperature reached 19.2°C and did not fall below 16.1°C during the night, breaking the previous record, set in 1864.
Copernicus open data and services are key for the monitoring of the effects of climate change and extreme temperatures on alpine environments.
