It is behind us. the hot spring i dry climatological summer - as reported by the Republic Hydrometeorological Institute (RHMZ), the summer of 2025 was the third warmest and the fourth driest in the history of measurements in Serbia.
At no station in the country during the summer was the seasonal average of precipitation achieved, that is, the average amount of precipitation during June, July and August from 1991 to 2020, it says Climate 101.
The closest to the average was Dimitrovgrad, where 83,7% of normal precipitation fell, and which was the only place in the country where precipitation was within normal limits. For the sake of comparison, only 17,3% of normal precipitation fell in the record-dry Negotin during the summer. In this city in eastern Serbia, this year's summer was the driest in the history of measurements.
In the rest of Serbia, conditions were very dry this summer at most stations, which means that less than half of the usual summer precipitation fell. Moreover, at as many as 11 stations throughout Serbia, the entire summer precipitation did not even reach the average for the month of June, including in Novi Sad, Belgrade and Niš.
The precipitation deficit was not "compensated" during July and August
The climatic modality of precipitation in Serbia is characterized by May and June as the rainiest months, with most of the so-called precipitation. convective nature. Convective precipitation occurs from clouds of strong vertical development when there is enough warm and moist air, with suitable conditions in the atmosphere. They occur most often in the summer and are of short duration, but bring a large amount of precipitation.
These precipitations can be accompanied by thunder and hail and represent what we would colloquially call summer showers.
Historically dry June, the driest in the history of measurements in Serbia, has important agrometeorological consequences and represents a disruption of the usual rainfall regime. The June deficit was not compensated at a large number of stations, and at those where it was, it happened at the end of July and during August, which, depending on the station, were drier or around the average.
The lack of rain in this critical period threatened agriculture in several ways: from the unavailability of drinking water to feed livestock to the weakening of the yield of field crops such as sunflower, corn and soybeans due to the lack of water in the critical period of plant development.
In addition to the driest year in Negotin, with 27,6 mm of precipitation recorded throughout the summer, it was especially dry in Banatski Karlovac, Zrenjanin, but also in Niš, where only 40,4 mm of rain was recorded, which is the driest summer in almost 30 years.
Precipitation becomes less frequent, but more intense
In the station that was closest to the summer average of precipitation this year, Dimitrovgrad, apart from two consecutive days with precipitation of 50 mm each, 12 other days with precipitation were recorded.
The statement that Dimitrovgrad has a "precipitation value within the normal range" does not reveal how this value was reached: due to an extreme precipitation episode that interrupted two extremely dry months (before this episode, which occurred in early August, 44,1 mm of precipitation fell).
This is due to a change in the distribution of precipitation caused by climate change: precipitation is concentrated in a small number of extreme precipitation episodes that occur after long dry periods. Such rainy episodes are not a completely mitigating circumstance for the areas they hit, as they also bring with them the risk of flash floods.
This summer there is a pattern that many stations have detected precipitation on the same dates, which would suggest that this precipitation is the result of the passage of a frontal system.
Frontal systems are one of the common causes of precipitation regardless of the season, and occur due to the organized movement of air masses and have a scale of several hundred to a thousand kilometers, bringing a change in the weather.
An intense heat wave 12 times more likely than in the mid-20th century
Isolated storms, which normally make up the majority of summer precipitation in these cases, are absent, which suggests that this summer over Serbia was marked by a strong anticyclonic state of the atmosphere, interrupted temporarily by these fronts.
Research shows that there is a trend towards a more frequent anticyclonic weather pattern in the summer. These conditions favor very hot and dry weather with light winds.
We felt the consequences of the anticyclonic state of the atmosphere in another way during July, when temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius on several occasions throughout the country.
Just as they affect the distribution of precipitation, climate change also causes more frequent and intense heat waves. As a recent climate change attribution study showed, an intense heat wave from the end of July 2025 is today, due to the impact of climate change, 12 times more likely to occur in Serbia than in the middle of the 20th century.
All of these phenomena, from intense heat waves to dry periods interrupted by heavy rainfall, are today described as extreme and record-breaking - but they are all drastically more likely than they were just a few decades ago.
In Belgrade, all 10 of the hottest summers were after 2000
This year's summer in Belgrade was the 4th warmest in the history of measurements - after the summers of 2024, 2012 and 2017, but this year's summer made another step forward.
Namely, once upon a time, the summer of 1946 in Belgrade was the hottest in the history of measurements. Moreover, it held that record for more than 50 years, until 2003. However, starting in 2025, this once record-breaking summer is no longer among the top 10 warmest – it has fallen to 11th place.
