Why isn’t it as cold in Spain as before?

Is it getting hotter in Spain? Without a doubt. Since the 1960s, the temperature has increased by 0.3 ºC every decade in Spain. It is one of the data from the “First annual report on the state of the climate”, presented by the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET). According to this report, Our country is warmer and has less water than in the 1960s. Besides:

The year 2019 was the sixth warmest in Spain since data began to be recorded in 1965. Eight of the ten warmest years have occurred in this century and five of the six with the highest temperatures have occurred in the last decade.The average annual precipitation in our country has decreased in the last 50 years. Last year it rained normal amounts but erratically: it was a wet or very wet year in some areas and very dry in others.Since the 1980s, each decade is warmer than the last.In April 2019, the Izaña Atmospheric Research Center, of the State Meteorological Agency, recorded an average daily CO2 concentration of 415 ppm, an unprecedented value since the human being inhabits the Earth. Unfortunately, in 2020 it has been exceeded again.

Why does this temperature increase occur? Undoubtedly behind it is global warming.

a vulnerable country

We are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events, Ribera explained. Most of our urban areas are concentrated on the coastline and will be affected by sea level rise and storms.

In context. For Rubén del Campo, the data for 2019 are interesting insofar as they are exposed together with other past and also other more general ones: 2019 was the second warmest year on the planet, only surpassed by 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). ). Both the last five years (2015-2019) and the last decade (2010-2019) have been the warmest on record.Eloquent graphics. But beyond the general trend, the data from Spain show that warming here is not only progressive but is also accelerating. “Since the mid-nineteenth century it has been estimated at around 0.1 °C per decade, but from the 1960s it seems to have accelerated and is 3 tenths of a degree,” added Del Campo.Cold in the minimum. In 2019 temperatures were above normal in almost all of Spain. Only in January the average was one tenth below, but that was because the minimums dropped a lot; the highs continued to rise above normal.
We lose water. The report also details how the average annual precipitation is somewhat less than 50 years ago, but the decline is moderate. What does happen, as a consequence of the increase in temperature, is that there is more evaporation, so that “the fallen water yields less”, in the words of Beatriz Hervella, from AEMET. The report will be published every year from now on to quantify the effects of climate change in Spain.

Heat waves: a trend

Only last year we suffered three heat waves, one of them extraordinary between June 26 and July 1, with temperatures above 43 °C in the northeast of the peninsula. Absolute annual maximum temperature records were broken and, what is most striking, this occurred in a month of June, just after summer, and not in July or August, as was usual.

“Of all the heat waves that have taken place in Spain during a month of June, half have occurred in the last decade,” explained the AEMET technician Rubén del Campo during the presentation of the report last July.

Where are we going

During 2019 there were episodes of torrential rains on the Mediterranean coast, such as the one at the beginning of September that flooded large areas of Alicante and Murcia. All that falling water, however, couldn’t stop it from Spain went through a period of drought and scarcity of water resources that same year. “Storms do not help to better manage the cumulative capacity of water,” said Teresa Ribera, Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, during the presentation of the document.

Devastating glory. In January 2020, the storm Gloria hit the Mediterranean coastline hard. It was no longer possible to continue looking the other way. In the words of the minister, “the passage of Gloria generated a clear awareness on the part of mayors, municipal corporations, economic operators and neighbors.” Six months later, “we’re still recovering from it,” she recalled.in chain. Climate change is about this, about how the weather is changing but also, in parallel, the territory and, in many cases, what we are used to enjoying what we live.Around the weather. “With this report, the evidence of the climate emergency is very visible,” said Teresa Ribera. “It helps us better understand that Spain may be greatly affected by climate change, given its geographical situation and its socioeconomic and employment characteristics, so closely related to its climate”.