The Aemet forecasts one of the hottest summers in the last 30 years

Summer, which will begin on June 21, is expected to be in Spain “warmer than is normal throughout the country, both on the Peninsula and on the islands,” according to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). All this comes after the warmest spring in the last 61 years and a 2022 that also broke all records. The quarter formed by the months of June, July and August will be one of the hottest in Spain in the last 30 years.

There is between 50 and 70% chance that we are going to have a summer that is warmer than normal, a more pronounced circumstance in the archipelagos.

The prediction is that in the next three months these high temperatures “will be more prominent” in the eastern zone and in the archipelagos, according to Estrella Gutiérrez, spokesperson and head of the Aemet territorial delegation coordination department.

Specifically, Gutiérrez stressed that this probability is higher especially in the Balearic and Canary Islands (70% probability of it being so), and the eastern half of the peninsula (60% probability).

However, Aemet does not specify the temperatures that can be reached. “That is difficult to specify, since these maps and forecasts refer to average temperatures,” says Rubén del Campo, Aemet spokesman.

In addition, according to the Copernicus model -of the EU-, there is between a 50% and a 70% probability (even more than 70% in the environment of the archipelagos) that this summer will be among the five warmest among 1993 and 2016.

“Summer looks very hot,” said Rubén del Campo, Aemet spokesman, who ventured that “it may be among the five, six or seven warmest in the last 30 years.”

“It is unlikely that it will be warmer than last year, which was extraordinary with 41 days of heat waves,” he added.

Regarding rainfall, it is estimated that there is between 40 and 50% chance that it will be a rainier summer than normal (although no signs can be seen in the northern half of Galicia and the Cantabrian Sea), on the slope Mediterranean and the Atlantic slope of Andalusia.

“In any case, it should be noted that in summer we do not usually have very high rainfall in our latitudes,” says Estrella Gutiérrez.

In 2022, it was the warmest year in Spain since records began historically (in 1961) for the country as a whole. We had an average temperature of 15.4º C, which was 6 tenths higher than in 2017 and 2020, which were the hottest to date.

“The hottest years in the historical series have been concentrated since 2017. In fact, the hottest years occur in the 21st century, it is a clear trend towards significant warming, says the report,” says Rubén del Campo.

The summer was extraordinarily hot, with visible adverse effects on health or ecosystems.

There were three heat waves, and between the three they totaled 41 days. “In other words, an extreme situation was experienced in the middle of the summer,” adds Del Campo. The previous record of 29 days was surpassed ”(from 2015), he says. Between July 9 and 22 there was the most important heat wave of the series, “because it was the most intense in terms of temperatures; the most extensive in terms of affected provinces, and the second longest”.

Throughout the year, there were 35 record days of warm days (and two of cold days), which means that between 8 and 9% of the days were record hot days for that date: that is, since 1950 there had not been a record like that. “One in ten days is a record. This is very remarkable because what would be expected in a climate that was not altered (in this case, mainly by the action of man through the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere) and stable are five cold records for every five record days of heat”, emphasizes Del Campo.

In the past decade, record warm days have been 11 times more frequent than record cold days. There is a clear disproportion. The surface waters of the sea in the coasts reached the highest levels since 1940 and in the Balearic Sea almost 30 degrees were registered on August 11.

The year 2022 was the sixth driest year in the historical series and the fourth driest in the entire 21st century. The recorded precipitation has been 26% below average.

For its part, the spring of 2023 -which includes the months of March, April and May- has been “extraordinarily warm”, the warmest in the historical series in Spain”, adds Del Campo. With 14.2 ºC, it has exceeded the average by 1.8 ºC (1991-2020). It exceeds the spring of 1997 in three tenths.

“Three of the last four seasons have been the warmest: summer and fall of last year, and the spring of 2023, which exceeds the warmest spring of 1997 by 0.3 degrees. We are getting used to the fact that things that seemed unusual are happening with a certain frequency”, commented Del Campo.

It has also been a very dry spring: the second driest spring in the historical series (although with an uneven distribution on the Peninsula). “The warmest spring coincides with the second driest spring.” High temperatures and droughts at the same time; They are the “compound effects” that the IPCC talks about.

The spring quarter of this year was the second driest since 1961, with 95.4 liters per square meter, second only in terms of low rainfall by the spring of 1995, which had been the driest to date and had socioeconomic consequences. huge then. “It was not the driest ‘in extremis’ because until May 28 it was,” Del Campo added.

The rains of the last days are beneficial; they moisten the soils, but they have not solved the drought in the long term. Almost all of Spain is in a meteorological drought according to the records of the last 12 months.

Spain also continues for the most part in a situation of long-term drought, that is, with little rain in the last 36 months, something that continues despite the storms at the end of May.

This long-lasting drought is especially intense in the northeast and the southern third of the peninsula.

In fact, the drought in the Guadiana accumulation basin is the longest in the historical series, while in the southern and Guadalquivir basin it is among the longest, while in the eastern Pyrenees/Catalonia it would be the most intense.

Every ten years there is a long-term drought in Spain, although the drought of the 90s was longer than the current one (the same as that of the 80s and the early 2000s). “This situation is not going to be resolved in the summer, and we will see what happens in the fall,” says del Campo.

On the other hand, it is not expected that El Niño will have an influence on the Peninsula due to rainfall, since there are other meteorological factors that intervene, especially in the autumn and winter rains.

“As much as it may be a stormier summer than normal”, the forecast is that the water reserve and the reservoir of dammed water will continue to decline, due to the higher heat, the higher level of evaporation and the increase in demand for water during the summer. summer.

Therefore, for the drought situation to be alleviated in autumn, it would have to rain 20 percent more than normal, something that “rarely happens.”