Fall getting under way with a little bit of summer

September is forecast to be warmer than typical for the season following a sizzling three months.

According to an analysis of 350 forecast scenarios from major research centers (Europe's ECMWF, Britain's UKMO, France's Meteo, Japan's JMA, the US NCEP, Germany's DWD, and Italy's CMCC), provided by the European climate change agency Copernicus, the trend is toward warmer-than-normal temperatures in Greece and Southeast Europe as a whole.

In 89% of the possible situations, there is a trend toward a positive variance in the average September temperature when compared to the years 1993-2016.

Tellingly, last August was the hottest since 2010 in northern and western Greece, the Ionian Sea and the Peloponnese. In fact, it was the third month of unusually high temperatures, leading to the conclusion that Greece experienced one of the hottest summers on record in the...