Big Picture

Balmy Swiss autumn

A man enjoying the sunshine on an unusually warm day as he walked by trees in autumn colours on the shore of the Geneva Lake, in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Sunday as record-breaking temperatures hit the country this month.

The towering Jungfrau mountain in the Swiss Alps last week saw the mercury hit an all-time high of 7.2 deg C for this month, meteorologists said.

The balmy temperature was measured at a weather station situated at an altitude of 3,580m on the mountain around midday.

That easily beat the previous temperature record of 4.7 deg C measured at the station in 1992.

Jungfrau, whose highest peak stretches up to 4,158m, figures among the tallest mountains in the Alps and is one of Switzerland's top tourist destinations.

Only slightly below the weather station, at an altitude of 3,454m, it boasts the highest-altitude railway station in Europe with a view of the mighty Aletsch, the largest glacier in the Alps.

At lower altitudes over the weekend, several parts of the country also raked in heat records for this time of the year, with some eastern areas seeing the mercury shoot past 20 deg C.

Last week, Britain's weather service said that for the first time, global mean temperature at the Earth's surface was set to reach 1 deg C above pre-industrial levels.

This represents an important marker as the world continues to warm due to human influence.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on November 17, 2015, with the headline Balmy Swiss autumn. Subscribe