Sparta vs Cordoba

[southathens]

Could Cordoba in Andalusia, Spain lose in the near future its title as Europe's hottest summer mean max location to Sparta in the Evrotas Valley, Greece?

 Below you can check Cordoba's summer mean maxes



And here is Sparta



So here is a hypothesis:

As you can already see Cordoba stands at 36.9C mean max for the hottest month, while Sparta stands at 36.0C. 

However Cordoba's data come from a passive Stevenson Screen station while Sparta's come from a fan aspirated station. Here in Greece due to our extremely rich fan aspirated stations network from the National Observatory of Athens we have noticed that when we run parallel comparisons with passive SS stations, mean max temperatures are severely underestimated due to the fan aspiration!

Granted Sparta's data are only 15 years while Cordoba is full 30 years. But it is highly unlikely that Sparta's data will change significantly. If anything I would expect Sparta's summer mean maxes to rise slightly with all this crazy heating up we see year after year in Greece. Now usually the T differences in mean maxes between passive SS and fan aspirated stations can vary in Greece from 0.5 to almost 2C.

The most extreme example of these discrepancies is the city of Serres in North Greece where August is a full 2C warmer in the passive WMO station compared to the nearby fan aspirated WMO station in terms of mean maxes for the same period!!And we are talking same altitude and only 1km distance between the stations.

Now I am not saying that this would necessarily be the discrepancy in Sparta if we had a nearby passive SS station but in any case it could not be less than 0.5C. The most intriguing thing though is (and here is I believe the strongest argument as to why Cordoba could potentially lose to Sparta in the near future): the fact that the Evrotas Valley is a foehn winds superpower and so fucking complicated in terms of orography. Sparta is basically located in the interior of the Valley between Taygetus and Parnon mountains, completely cut out from the sea on all directions, some 30 km away from the shores. As the meltemi winds sweep Greece during the summer,  Taygetus provides a constant hot NW foehn winds effect and Parnonas a constant NE foehn effect which strongly affects the interior of the valley. Mind you that the station in Sparta is not even in the hottest part of the valley!It is located just outside the city some 4km from the northern tip of Sparta which is much closer to Parnonas (thus a stronger foehn effect) and further inland (thus less effect from the sea breeze which comes from the south). 

Now take a look at Cordoba. A completely flat plain for miles and miles. No significant orography no nothing. It's just so hot due to the constant heatwaves from Africa reaching the Andalusia landmass almost intact. Cordoba basically exhausts Andalusia's heat dynamic in terms of summer mean maxes due to its huge distance from the sea (I mean for South European standards anyway). 

What do you guys think?

[southathens]

If you notice my introduction about Sparta a major factor to consider is the orography around the interior of the Evrotas Valley and the current position of the Sparta station. It's outside the city some 4km south of the N edge. I am hypothesising that moving the station further inland at the northern tip of the city where the sea breeze weakens even more and the foehn effect from Parnonas mountain might be stronger we might see a significant heating up.

Here is a rough map of the Sparta station within the Evrotas Valley. 

As you see the city is between these 2 huge mountains. Effectively placing the station further inland (either in the north suburbs or even further north) might just do the trick given the constant foehn exposure the area gets due to the summer meltemi winds we get in Greece.

 

Actually there are even better positions we can move the station to theoretically heat up. For example check the map below. Around 15km north of the Sparta station in the Pardali area where the elevation still remains around 250 meters and just next to the 1400 meters summit of Taygetos we might get significant heating up. Much further inland in the Evrotas Valley.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Manos33

[Foxpalms]

18 hours ago, Manos33 said:

Could Cordoba in Andalusia, Spain lose in the near future its title as Europe's hottest summer mean max location to Sparta in the Evrotas Valley, Greece?

 Below you can check Cordoba's summer mean maxes



And here is Sparta



So here is a hypothesis:

As you can already see Cordoba stands at 36.9C mean max for the hottest month, while Sparta stands at 36.0C. 

However Cordoba's data come from a passive Stevenson Screen station while Sparta's come from a fan aspirated station. Here in Greece due to our extremely rich fan aspirated stations network from the National Observatory of Athens we have noticed that when we run parallel comparisons with passive SS stations, mean max temperatures are severely underestimated due to the fan aspiration!

Granted Sparta's data are only 15 years while Cordoba is full 30 years. But it is highly unlikely that Sparta's data will change significantly. If anything I would expect Sparta's summer mean maxes to rise slightly with all this crazy heating up we see year after year in Greece. Now usually the T differences in mean maxes between passive SS and fan aspirated stations can vary in Greece from 0.5 to almost 2C.

The most extreme example of these discrepancies is the city of Serres in North Greece where August is a full 2C warmer in the passive WMO station compared to the nearby fan aspirated WMO station in terms of mean maxes for the same period!!And we are talking same altitude and only 1km distance between the stations.

Now I am not saying that this would necessarily be the discrepancy in Sparta if we had a nearby passive SS station but in any case it could not be less than 0.5C. The most intriguing thing though is (and here is I believe the strongest argument as to why Cordoba could potentially lose to Sparta in the near future): the fact that the Evrotas Valley is a foehn winds superpower and so fucking complicated in terms of orography. Sparta is basically located in the interior of the Valley between Taygetus and Parnon mountains, completely cut out from the sea on all directions, some 30 km away from the shores. As the meltemi winds sweep Greece during the summer,  Taygetus provides a constant hot NW foehn winds effect and Parnonas a constant NE foehn effect which strongly affects the interior of the valley. Mind you that the station in Sparta is not even in the hottest part of the valley!It is located just outside the city some 4km from the northern tip of Sparta which is much closer to Parnonas (thus a stronger foehn effect) and further inland (thus less effect from the sea breeze which comes from the south). 

Now take a look at Cordoba. A completely flat plain for miles and miles. No significant orography no nothing. It's just so hot due to the constant heatwaves from Africa reaching the Andalusia landmass almost intact. Cordoba basically exhausts Andalusia's heat dynamic in terms of summer mean maxes due to its huge distance from the sea (I mean for South European standards anyway). 

What do you guys think?

Probably the fan aspirated stations are cooling the temps slightly. However the data from Cordoba is older and Cordoba in recent years has also been MUCH hotter than the that average. During the summer I lost count of the amount of times it was over 40c there. The last 13 years there. This is from the official weather station.

The last 3 years 

And look at how hot it was there last year.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Foxpalms

[southathens]

4 hours ago, Foxpalms said:

Probably the fan aspirated stations are cooling the temps slightly. However the data from Cordoba is older and Cordoba in recent years has also been MUCH hotter than the that average. During the summer I lost count of the amount of times it was over 40c there. The last 13 years there. This is from the official weather station.

Cheers!

Actually the fan aspiration vs the stevenson screen T difference is rather significant. Especially during the summer and in areas with traditionally hot and windless summers such as Cordoba, Seville etc.

Below is a comparison on August and July mean maxes that I run between the ony fan aspirated station in downtown Seville compared to the SS station in the airport and against the other stations as well for the period of parallel functioning for all. Unfortunately Cordoba does not have any fan aspirated station.  Cordoba's data below come from Ogimet which is highly accurate for Spain.

http://www.tiempoensevilla.es/wxnoaaclimatereports.php

 

After that I adjusted for bias the Cordoba station. I think that's the closest we could get to fan aspirated data from Cordoba

 

Now that gives us a 0.6C edge over Sparta but given the fact that the interior of the Evrotas Valley is largely unexplored I am hypothesising we might just find areas further north in the valley that might beat Cordoba or at least it would be really really close.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Manos33

[Phoenikakias]

Title of topic could be rephrased to Hamilcar vs Leonidas, very reminiscent of Cinecittà's B movies such as Maciste vs Hercules or even Maciste vs Hercules vs Samson!

[southathens]

We have a new HNMS station in Sparta around 2km north of the current Sparta station from NOA.

So far with only one month of data we notice it is hotter.

Mean max for Sparta NOA so far in June stands at 37.8C while Sparta HNMS is at 38.2C

Today Sparta HNMS registered 40.7C vs 40.2C for Sparta NOA

[minusz0]

Hi,

I am a long time extreme climate enthusiast. For a few years I do shorter term measurements, mostly in isolated locations around the world. I recently returned from Greece where I made a 5 days research in Laconia. My station was placed inside the Evrotas Gorge, north of Skala settlement. I am using UTRED 30-16 data logger with the sensor under a Barani helical shield secured on a tripod.

My station recorded 42.2 degrees Celsius on 18th July. I am interested to compare these measurements with the ones recorded by the official stations in the area. I know that some of them have passive shields (HNMS), while others are fan aspirated (NOA). According to a source on the net the messinian Skala recorded the highest temperature (43.1 C) in this period. Do you have access to the data of Sparta and also the laconian Skala and Krokees NOA stations for the 17-21 July interval? Many thanks.

regards,

Zsombor

 

[Jadd Correia]

On 12/22/2023 at 2:51 AM, Phoenikakias said:

Title of topic could be rephrased to Hamilcar vs Leonidas, very reminiscent of Cinecittà's B movies such as Maciste vs Hercules or even Maciste vs Hercules vs Samson!

Hamilcar's brood!!!

[southathens]

On 7/28/2024 at 9:19 AM, minusz0 said:

Hi,

I am a long time extreme climate enthusiast. For a few years I do shorter term measurements, mostly in isolated locations around the world. I recently returned from Greece where I made a 5 days research in Laconia. My station was placed inside the Evrotas Gorge, north of Skala settlement. I am using UTRED 30-16 data logger with the sensor under a Barani helical shield secured on a tripod.

My station recorded 42.2 degrees Celsius on 18th July. I am interested to compare these measurements with the ones recorded by the official stations in the area. I know that some of them have passive shields (HNMS), while others are fan aspirated (NOA). According to a source on the net the messinian Skala recorded the highest temperature (43.1 C) in this period. Do you have access to the data of Sparta and also the laconian Skala and Krokees NOA stations for the 17-21 July interval? Many thanks.

regards,

Zsombor

 

Sorry for the late reply

 

Skala Lakonias NOA

Sparta NOA

Sparta HNMS

 

Mind you the new Sparta HNMS station is a state of the art Microstep station which actually undereports maximum temperatures by around 0.2C compared to fan aspirated stations. The new Sparta station is located 2km north of Sparta NOA station.

[southathens]

Krokees NOA station is offline from mid June. 

[minusz0]

Many thanks for the info. Taking into account the relatively small distances, it seems that the spot chosen by me indeed has some topographical advantage. Below are the maximums and minimums of the 5 day measurement in the Evrotas Gorge with the exact time. 

July 17  MAX  41.1  15:13    -

July 18  MAX  42.2  14:52    MIN 22.1  5:02

July 19  MAX  41.8  15:08    MIN 26.6  2:55

July 20  MAX  41.2  13:54    MIN 26.2  1:20

July 21  MAX  35.8  12:25    MIN 21.7  6:43

[veeman55]

Who cares about greeces temperatures.

Southern Spain will always have a year round warmer and drier weather especially in fall winter and autumn than overrated greeces weather. When that north western or northeastern wind blows in all of greece including the islands get ready to freeze

[southathens]

On 9/25/2024 at 5:58 AM, veeman55 said:

Who cares about greeces temperatures.

Southern Spain will always have a year round warmer and drier weather especially in fall winter and autumn than overrated greeces weather. When that north western or northeastern wind blows in all of greece including the islands get ready to freeze

Southern Greece beats systematically southern Spain's mean annual Ts.

In fact, Lindos in Rhodes records an average annual T of 22.0C which is unheard of by geographical European standards. 

Oh and a point regarding the islands. Try Kasos and Karpathos in the Dodecanese. Kasos has never dropped below 2.7C in its entire meteorological history while Karpathos has never dropped below 2.2C the past half century that observations began. In the meantime even Gibraltar dipped to 1.0C back in 2005.

I mean come on. Don't compare a huge landmass with great continentality to Greece's tiny SE islands. The islands are obviously milder than any landmass in Europe.  

[southathens]

On 9/5/2024 at 1:25 AM, minusz0 said:

Many thanks for the info. Taking into account the relatively small distances, it seems that the spot chosen by me indeed has some topographical advantage. Below are the maximums and minimums of the 5 day measurement in the Evrotas Gorge with the exact time. 

July 17  MAX  41.1  15:13    -

July 18  MAX  42.2  14:52    MIN 22.1  5:02

July 19  MAX  41.8  15:08    MIN 26.6  2:55

July 20  MAX  41.2  13:54    MIN 26.2  1:20

July 21  MAX  35.8  12:25    MIN 21.7  6:43

maybe your station is a non fan aspirated station right?

The Ts I provided above are all from fan aspirated stations. Usually passive stations overheat during the summer compared to fan aspirated ones. 

[minusz0]

Sorry for the late reply:

Yes, passive shield, but it's this one: https://www.baranidesign.com/meteoshield-professional

I personally compared it to the Vaisala (also passive) of the weather station where I work during summer high radiation - low wind conditions and it was cooler on average with about 0.5 degrees, sometimes with 1 full degree. Some claim is even better than the compact aspirated ones (I have no concrete experience on this front).

[southathens]

On 10/7/2024 at 11:54 AM, minusz0 said:

Yes, passive shield, but it's this one: https://www.baranidesign.com/meteoshield-professional

 

Yeah , I think there must be slight overheat compared to fan aspirated stations used by the National Observatory of Athens in the Evrotas Valley.  I mean that's what I can tell from your data. 

[Foxpalms]

On 10/3/2024 at 4:34 AM, southathens said:

Southern Greece beats systematically southern Spain's mean annual Ts.

In fact, Lindos in Rhodes records an average annual T of 22.0C which is unheard of by geographical European standards. 

Oh and a point regarding the islands. Try Kasos and Karpathos in the Dodecanese. Kasos has never dropped below 2.7C in its entire meteorological history while Karpathos has never dropped below 2.2C the past half century that observations began. In the meantime even Gibraltar dipped to 1.0C back in 2005.

I mean come on. Don't compare a huge landmass with great continentality to Greece's tiny SE islands. The islands are obviously milder than any landmass in Europe.  

This location in Greece looks like the mildest that I have seen. Maybe worth trying a coconut palm there against the southern side of a house wall there. The same winter averages as Gibraltar with a hotter summer. It's closer than the other islands to Turkey so more hotter air masses will be hitting it and that part of southern Turkey nearby is very protected by mountains to block cold air masses. This is for the town area the airport data is colder since it's 500ft above sea level.

[southathens]

On 10/10/2024 at 8:49 PM, Foxpalms said:

This location in Greece looks like the mildest that I have seen. Maybe worth trying a coconut palm there against the southern side of a house wall there. The same winter averages as Gibraltar with a hotter summer. It's closer than the other islands to Turkey so more hotter air masses will be hitting it and that part of southern Turkey nearby is very protected by mountains to block cold air masses. This is for the town area the airport data is colder since it's 500ft above sea level.

 

Below the actual data of the NOA station in Kastellorizo. I am not sure where you got this graph from but it is not from the official station.

Also it is way milder than Gibraltar in the winter.  Note the mean annual T currently at 21.9C. Its the second warmest area of Greece after Lindos with 22.0C mean annual T.

Over in the Lindos thread we have extensively discussed the possibility of planting cocos in Kastellorizo but it has a population of only 600 people. I doubt any local will seriously bother to do that...

 

[Aceraceae]

Psari Forada in southern Crete looks better, slightly warmer coldest month, and much less cold rain. 250mm vs 500mm. It's almost a full degree further south (35 vs 36 latitude), but would still easily eclipse Bermuda for northernmost Cocos viable temperature location. However, they would still need supplemental summer watering, and would not naturalize like in Bermuda. 

[southathens]

On 10/16/2024 at 7:35 PM, Aceraceae said:

Psari Forada in southern Crete looks better, slightly warmer coldest month, and much less cold rain. 250mm vs 500mm. It's almost a full degree further south (35 vs 36 latitude), but would still easily eclipse Bermuda for northernmost Cocos viable temperature location. However, they would still need supplemental summer watering, and would not naturalize like in Bermuda. 

Unfortunately the stations between Psari Forada and Kastellorizo are not comparable.

The Psari Forada station is a passive Davis station while the Kastellorizo station is a fan aspirated one. The higher mean maxes you see in Psari Forada are probably due to the lack of mechanical aspiration. We believe that Kastellorizo would still beat Psari Forada if we had a passive Davis station over there as well. 

Also note that Crete is very susceptible to the Aegean Jet Stream winter events. What we call in Greece the ''prosinemos'' pattern. Its like the lake effect which causes occasionally violent snowfalls in Athens but temperatures rarely drop to 0C.

This means that even areas of South Crete can and will see snowfall from time to time albeit with non freezing temperatures. Kastellorizo, coastal Kasos, South coastal Karpathos and the Port of Rhodes have never recorded snowfall in their entire meteorological history. Especially for the city of Rhodes that we have huge archival databases from the press we are certain that settled snow has not been recorded for the past at least 130 years. 

On the other hand even South Crete will see snowfall or even settled snow once a decade or once in 20 years on the coasts.  Ierapetra for example next to Psari Forada has dropped various times close to 1C or close to 0C during snowfall events in South coastal Crete. The South Dodecanese is by far the most viable candidate for cocos in Greece.  Temperatures over there have never dropped below 2C while a 0C and settled snow can happen in South Crete. Check the Lindos thread where we discuss this extensively. 

[southathens]

Here the updated Evrotas NOA Hydrometeorological station data.

Please approach the data with some caution as this is a non WMO and non fan aspirated station.

It is located around 10 km north of the city of Sparta and its a good indication of how hot Sparta can get during the summer..

[southathens]

And here how Evrotas is doing against Montoro in Cordoba