Similar to what has been recorded globally, Madeira continues to accumulate records and in a few years, surpass previous records, in particular for air temperature and the amount of precipitation in short periods.
So much so that “the month of August 2023 was the hottest in Funchal since there have been continuous records”, confirms Victor Prior, IPMA regional delegate in Madeira. To prove this, it states that “the average air temperature was 25.7 °C, with the average minimum temperature being 22.6 °C and the maximum daily temperature being 28.7 °C”. In addition to these ‘hot’ records, the meteorologist also reveals that “the minimum temperature varied between 21.2 °C and 24.2 °C and the daily maximum between 26.7 °C and 30.9 °C”. This is despite the fact that the maximum temperature ‘only’ exceeded 30 °C on two days (day 11/30.9 °C and day 20/30.5 °C). Regarding the minimum temperature, all 31 days of August were tropical nights (minimum temperature equal to or greater than 20 °C).
Victor Prior reinforces that these values “clearly show that the month of August was hot, during the day and at night and these data are in line with what most people felt and said: ‘it’s very hot, tonight it was very hot , we slept badly’”, he recalls.