The heat wave in the western Mediterranean "Almost impossible without climate change"
According to a study published on Friday, the heat wave observed in Spain, Portugal and North Africa led to “temperatures sometimes exceeding 20 degrees above the usual value for the time of year”.
“Without climate change,” the “extreme heat” recorded in late April on the Iberian Peninsula and parts of North Africa would have been “almost impossible,” shows a scientific study published on Friday.
This “exceptionally early heat wave” resulted in “temperatures that sometimes exceeded seasonal norms by 20 degrees and broke records for the month of April by more than 6 degrees,” underlines this report from World Weather Attribution (WWA), a global network of scientists who assess the link between extreme weather events and climate change.
A hot, dry air mass from North Africa last week brought all-time April temperature records to Portugal and mainland Spain, with 36.9 and 38.8 degrees respectively. Levels worthy of the month of July. In Morocco, local records were broken and temperatures sometimes exceeded 41 degrees, while in Algeria they exceeded 40 degrees.
A “rare episode”, also in the current context
“Human-caused climate change has increased the likelihood of this record heatwave in Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria by at least 100 times compared to the pre-industrial climate context.”
This heatwave is “so extreme” that it remains a “rare episode in the current climatic context,” even in a region of the world already accustomed to an increase in these phenomena “in recent years,” WWA said.
According to this research group, temperatures recorded in this area over the past week were “3.5 degrees higher than they should have been without climate change”.
“In the future we will see more and more frequent and intense heat waves in this part of the world,” warned Sjoukje Philip, researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and member of the WWA, during a presentation from the report to the press.
farmland “smothered”
These unusually high temperatures come “after several years of historic drought, which are exacerbating the heat’s impact on agriculture already threatened by increasing water shortages,” notes the WWA.
In Spain, a country whose agricultural regions are nicknamed the ‘vegetable garden of Europe’, the largest farmers’ union, Coag, estimates that 60% of farmland is currently ‘choked’ by lack of rain.
The country’s reservoirs, which store rainwater so it can be used in the drier months, are currently operating at less than 50% utilization, with as much as a quarter in some areas such as Catalonia (northeast), where the situation is extremely worrying. A water shortage that has caused many farmers to stop spring sowing, especially of cereals and oilseeds.
The Spanish weather authority threatened
“The Mediterranean Sea is one of the regions in Europe most affected by climate change. While the region is already facing a long and very intense drought, these high temperatures at a time when it should rain make things worse,” stresses warden Friederike Otto, from Imperial College London, one of the authors of the study.
Amid mounting heat waves in Spain – which had its hottest year last year – the government has defended the national weather agency Aemet against a backdrop of a climate “conspiracy” that has been met with a spate of insults and threats.
Attacks denounced by Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera. “Lies, conspiracies and fears, insults… This impoverishes our society”, She denounced Friday on her Twitter accountby calling for people to “say stop” to these practices.
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