An unusually hot October has suspended the autumnal cold snap in the Northern Hemisphere, along with beautiful autumnal colors. El Nino also played a role in the delay.
Image: Horacio Zamora/Eyepix Group/Visually/picture alliance
Scotland in early November: This year, autumn in the Northern Hemisphere arrived late. Persistent heat caused temperatures to climb to historic highs. October 2026 was the warmest worldwide since records began.
Image: Russell Cheyne/REUTERS
This winding road runs through mountainous and wooded landscapes in the Black Sea region of northeastern Turkey. Every autumn, this area attracts nature lovers and photography enthusiasts from all over the world.
Image: Yusuf Okur/Anadolu/IMAGO
Rain is a welcome change for the plants in Hamburg’s Planten un Blomen park. High temperatures due to human-caused climate change will intensify due to the weather phenomenon El Nino, which is also driving up global temperatures. El Nino is expected to be particularly strong this year.
Image: Marcus Brandt/dpa/picture alliance
In late October, the Canadian city of Toronto broke an 80-year-old heat record with a high of 23 degrees Celsius (73 Fahrenheit). The northern country is warming twice as fast as the global average, with the Arctic regions warming up three times as fast.
Image: Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/picture alliance
Fog is part of autumn in Poland, where Warsaw’s tallest buildings could be seen shrouded in a dense blanket on October 18. Longer nights and less sunlight cools the ground so that moist residual heat in the air condenses into fog.
Image: Sergei Gapon/AFP
Even in mid-October, the bridge connecting the island of Mainau in Lake Constance, Germany, to the mainland is still suspended over dry ground. Historic heat waves and persistent drought caused water levels in major European rivers, such as the Rhine and the Danube, to drop to low levels in summer and early autumn. Inland navigation across Europe continues to be severely hampered by the low water.
Image: Markus Keller/imageBROKER/picture alliance
Autumn is also the time when pink muhly grass blooms, including in Fuyang, eastern China. As in the rest of the world, autumn in China has been exceptionally warm so far. In October, temperatures in some areas climbed above 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit), a new record.
Image: AFP
In some places, autumn is just starting to give way to winter, as in Kazan, in east-central Russia (pictured). Meteorologically speaking, autumn ends on December 1. That’s also when the peak of El Nino is expected to occur, with its global repercussions. In North America, the winter could turn out to be milder than usual as a result. For Europe, forecasts remain unclear.
Image: Andrey Titov/Russian Look/IMAGO8 images1 | 88 imageshttps://p.dw.com/p/5P43E
