AFP, published Monday 26 June 2023 at 14:27.
According to the weather agency (Aemet), Spain is facing the first heatwave of the summer, with temperatures that could rise above 44 degrees locally in the south of the country.
This “first heat wave of the summer”, which began on Sunday, is expected to push the thermometer to 39-40 degrees in the regions of Madrid, Extremadura (south-west) and western Spain. Andalusia (south), even reaching over 30 degrees 44 degrees in the Andalusian provinces of Seville and Cordoba, warned Ruben del Campo, spokesman for Aemet.
According to Aemet, the mercury temperature reached 43.8 degrees on Sunday in the municipality of El Granado in the province of Huelva (south-west).
Spain, a country at the forefront of global warming in Europe, is used to extreme temperatures, particularly in the south, but has faced a multiplication and intensification of heat waves in recent years, according to scientists.
“In the last ten years, the frequency of these hot spells has tripled compared to previous years. This goes hand in hand with the lengthening of the (meteorological) summer by about ten days per decade since the 1980s,” Ruben del Campo pointed out.
Already at the end of April, a mass of hot, dry air from North Africa on mainland Spain had reached an all-time high of 38.8 degrees for the month of April, a level worthy of the month of July.
This phenomenon “would have been almost impossible without climate change,” according to a study published a few days later by the World Weather Attribution (WWA).
More broadly, Europe experienced a 2022 that was 2.3 degrees warmer than the climate at the end of the 19th century, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced last week, confirming the continent is overheating twice as fast the world average, resulting in heat waves and exceptional droughts.