Austria records all-time temperature high of 40.8C: weather service

Austria set a new temperature record on Tuesday with 40.8C measured in Vienna, the national weather agency said.

The reading was made in Stammersdorf in the east of the capital, GeoSphere Austria said in a statement, breaking the previous record of 40.5 degrees on August 8, 2013 at Bad Deutsch-Altenburg in eastern Austria.

The latest temperature spike comes on top of an already exceptional spell of hot weather and low rainfall in recent months, with several local records already broken.

The country saw its fourth-warmest July on record and "at some measuring stations, the precipitation deficit reached 90 percent", the weather agency said.

Apricots have begun ripening roughly 20 days earlier than the average observed over the 1961-1991 period, illustrating the impact of global warming on crops, the agency said.

Nasir Dis, 60, a restaurant owner in Vienna, told AFP that "very few" people were visiting his restaurant, calling the weather "a catastrophe".

"We just wait for this heat to be over. What can we do? Nothing... No one wants to eat or drink anything. Everyone just wants to barricade themselves at home," he said.

Austria had also already recorded its longest heatwave in June.

Climate change has intensified a drought across Europe this summer, with extreme heat driving the exceptionally dry conditions, according to experts.