Hungary Experienced Intense Heat Waves in Late June and Again in Late July This Year, and the Term "Heat Dome" Entered

But does the phrase describe a real atmospheric phenomenon, or is it just a sensationalist media invention? The term "heat dome" first appeared in the American press in the early 2010s and entered professional meteorological usage after 2021, though its tabloid ring initially made even meteorologists wary of it. A 2025 study highlights that not every heat wave causes a heat dome, and not every heat dome causes a heat wave.

In a short study published on the HungaroMet website, meteorologists Ákos Horváth and Hajnalka Breuer describe the atmospheric condition that contributes to extremely hot and dry weather — a state that can indeed be called a heat dome. In summer, with the sun high in the sky, an anticyclone driven by dried-out soil surfaces and inflowing hot air can create a vertical atmospheric state in which increasingly unstable dry air in the lower layers is trapped beneath a capping layer several thousand meters up. As long as the anticyclone persists, this state reinforces itself, enabling further warming and drying — a fitting name for which is heat dome.

However, the air beneath the capping layer becomes ever more unstable, and as the anticyclone weakens and moister air arrives, explosively fast-developing thunderstorms form within the air mass. Such heat storms have many distinctive characteristics that were relatively rare in the Carpathian Basin in previous years. The full text, with diagrams and explanations, is available on the HungaroMet website. The article also includes 9 photos.