Baking in summer heat, Spain worries about what comes next
In Madrid, where it hit around 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday, schools were allowed to close early to avoid the heat. In Catalonia it is so dry that the valves of an irrigation canal are closed due to a lack of water. And in Seville, police are investigating the death of a horse pulling a tourist carriage from heatstroke.
With temperatures reaching over 100 degrees in early April, people in Spain have gone into summer mode, looking for shade, to the beach. But the extreme heat – this early in the year – has led to fears that it is no longer a seasonal phenomenon, but a new everyday reality.
On Thursday, mainland Spain recorded its highest-ever temperature in April, with a temperature of 38.8 degrees Celsius, about 102 degrees Fahrenheit, in the southern city of Cordoba. This is reported by the country’s national weather service. And in several parts of the country, thermometers have exceeded seasonal standards by more than 25 degrees Fahrenheit, reaching values typical of summer.
Coinciding with a prolonged drought that has already depleted water reservoirs and dried up fields, the extreme heat has caused experts and authorities to brace for an earlier-than-expected return of heat-related disasters, such as wildfires, and revise their forecasts.
“It’s really extraordinary,” said Cayetano Torres, a spokesman for the weather service Spanish television this week. “We are quite surprised.”
The cause of the abnormally high temperatures is “the entry of a very warm and dry air mass from North Africa”, which sits just above Spain and does not move much, the weather service said in a statement. rack.
Even residents of Cordoba, accustomed to very hot springs, were surprised by the extreme heat.
“We thought it would come later in May or June,” Manuel Suárez Fernández, who works at a pub on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, said in a telephone interview. “But every year it starts earlier than the last.”
Mr Suárez Fernández said hardly anyone ventured out into the streets in the afternoon to avoid peak temperatures. “They lock themselves in the house, stock up on fresh water and go out when night falls,” he said.
The Spanish weather agency has been warning for several days of the incoming high temperatures, with peaks on Thursday and Friday.
In and around Madrid, the authorities worked to help hospitals, schools and health centers cope, including by ensuring that adequate air conditioning is provided. In mid-May they also open outdoor pools, a fixture in the Spanish capital during the summer, a month earlier than usual. Subways will run more often to avoid overcrowding in scorching heat.
Residents are warned to stay hydrated and provide care to vulnerable people such as children and the elderly.
The city of Seville, in the south, deployed extra medical staff to help people suffering from heat-related illnesses during the “Feria de Abril”, a week-long fair that started on Sunday and usually draws hundreds of thousands of revelers. Spanish television images left many fairground participants standing in tents in the shade.
The extreme heat has also affected neighboring countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Portugal, said Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who to keep up with of extreme temperatures around the world.
“This magnitude is extremely rare in such a large area and for several days in a row,” said Mr. Herrera, who described the episode as a heat wave. “Hundreds of stations are breaking their records by huge margins of up to 5 degrees Celsius above previous ones and even approaching May’s records.”
While linking a single heat wave to climate change requires analysis, scientists have no doubt that heat waves around the world are getting hotter, more frequent and longer-lasting.
Spain in particular has been hit by higher temperatures. Summer temperatures there now last an average of almost five weeks longer than in the early 1980s, according to one study published by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia this week. In 2022, Spain experienced the warmest year ever recorded.
The current high temperatures are likely to exacerbate the situation in a country already suffering from a prolonged drought. Reservoirs today are at 50 percent capacity, the result of more than 30 consecutive months of below-average rainfall.
“The persistent dry heat this spring in the Iberian Peninsula is putting pressure on agriculture and in the medium term we may face water shortages,” said Mr. Herrera.
The coordinator of the Farmers and Farmers Organization, an agricultural association in Spain, said in a recent report that the drought has led to “irreversible losses of more than 3.5 million hectares [more than 8.5 million acres] of grains.” The organization predicted that the wheat and barley harvest will be virtually lost in four regions.
This week, Luis Planas, Spain’s agriculture minister, said he had asked the European Union for financial support for farm workers hit by the drought, including emergency funds from the bloc’s common agricultural policy. “It is an exceptional circumstance,” Mr Planas said during a government press conference on Tuesday.
Paqui Doblas, the manager of a small hotel in the southern coastal city of Malaga, said the region’s water supply was rapidly declining, affecting the production of fruits such as avocados and mangoes.
Ms Doblas said many people in Malaga have experienced water shortages in the past and have started saving water in anticipation of heat waves. But she said she wished local authorities had taken more precautions.
“I kind of feel like we’re the orchestra on the Titanic,” she said in a phone interview. “The ship is sinking and we keep playing.”
Spain’s weather agency has warned that the combination of drought and high temperatures increases the risk of wildfires, a phenomenon the country is all too familiar with.
Last summer, dozens of wildfires ravaged the territory for days, displacing thousands of residents and eating a record 750,000 hectares of land, according to facts of the European Forest First Information System.
Scientists and local authorities are now concerned about wildfires breaking out earlier and earlier in the year. Last month, Spain’s first major wildfire of 2023 occurred.