Record temperature and red alert for Buenos Aires due to heat wave

The Argentine city of Buenos Aires registered its historical high-temperature record for March yesterday, with 37.9 degrees Celsius.

The city is in the middle of a heat wave that led the National Meteorological Service (SMN) to establish a red alert for the region due to the health risk caused by the climatic phenomenon.

The country’s capital equaled the record from Mar. 7, 1952, although the thermal sensation, due to humidity, rose to 43 degrees Celsius during the afternoon.

“With these 37.9 degrees Celsius, the city equals its historical record for the highest temperature recorded during March. The data are (recorded) since 1906,” said via Twitter the expert Cindy Fernandez, communicator of the SMN.

The oppressive temperature was compounded in the afternoon by smoke due to active fires in the Paraná River Delta’s southern area, near Baradero, about 140 kilometers west of the capital.

In total, 10 of the 24 provinces of the country exceeded 34 degrees Celsius this day.

These are the central districts of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, La Pampa, and San Luis; the provinces of Entre Ríos and Santa Fe, both located in the east of the country; and three districts in the northwest, San Juan, Catamarca, and La Rioja, in addition to the capital.

The SMN confirmed that Argentina recorded the warmest summer in its history since 1961, in the summer of 2022 and 2023, with 1.3 degrees Celsius above average temperature.

Buenos Aires also reached the hottest summer in its history, with an average temperature of 25.6 degrees Celsius, taking into account records kept since 1906.

Within this framework, the state agency, under the Ministry of Defense, issued a red alert for the federal capital and surrounding areas since high temperatures represent a “high to extreme effect on health”, being “very dangerous, being able to affect all people, even healthy ones”.