In 2015, large parts of Europe were characterized by extraordinary high summer temperatures, accompanied by very dry conditions, particularly in central‐eastern Europe. Several major heat episodes occurred from the end of June until mid‐September. We provide an ad‐hoc evaluation of the observed climatological extremes in a secular context, by using a set of long station time series in daily resolution. Our data set comprises 42 temperature and 43 precipitation records, predominantly starting already in the 19th century. To investigate local record values, the individual full record length is analysed for each station, while regionally averaged analyses are presented for the core study period of 1901–2015. The study area covers Europe's central latitudes (44° to 52°N), extending from England in the west up to the central Ukraine in the east. During summer 2015, various indices representing extremely high maximum and minimum temperatures (strongly) exceeded previous record high values, mainly in an area extending from eastern Germany to western Ukraine. Additionally, severely to extremely dry conditions with unusually frequent dry days were prevailing particularly in the (central‐) eastern part of the study area. Drought indices combining temperature and precipitation revealed drought conditions comparable or even worse than those of former extreme summers like 2003.

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The year 2018 was affected by very long-lasting, stable summer conditions in vast parts of Europe, in many regions already starting in April and lasting until October. We investigate the thermal characteristics of this year in a secular time perspective, using a spatially well-distributed dataset of 67 European stations (west of~30 E) with daily long-term air temperature observations. Our dataset comprises many of the longest and most reliable (homogenous) temperature measurements available in Europe, mainly starting already in the 19th or rarely even 18th century. Individual time series length is considered to analyse the summer 2018 temperatures into a more than two-century time perspective, while European time series are presented for the period 1855-2018 and records of five European regions are considered from 1881 onwards. The extreme long duration of the 2018 summer most clearly manifested itself in pronounced new continental maxima of summer half year (April-September) temperature averages and the number of days with maximum temperatures ≥20 and ≥25 C. Furthermore, those indices reached new local maxima at about half of our investigated stations. Records of other temperature indices, rather representing intense heat conditions, were particularly broken in the extended Baltic Sea region, supported by distinct and long-lasting anticyclonic conditions in this area. However, the extreme summer of 2003 still dominates the ranking of most of these indices on the continental level, even though it is now generally closely followed by summer 2018. We show that long-term variations of teleconnection indices and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, as well as seasonal and anthropogenic effects, supported both the recent hot summers and the extreme summer of 2018.