Extreme weather has been unleashed this summer in an unusual way, causing repeated temperature records, heat waves, tremendous forest fires and floods. The latest of the extreme events was Cyclone Daniel, which dumped torrential rains on the Libyan coast and caused flooding that killed around 10,000 people.
“Of all the seasons of the year, summer is the one that is registering the most changes; It is not strange that the greatest extremes of climate radicalization are concentrated at this time of year,” explains Marc Prohom, head of the climatology area of ??the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya (SMC).
“There are more and more signs that we are going towards a greater radicalization of extremes, both in terms of their number and their values ??and temperature, compared to what was thought a decade or a few ago,” says the Catalan climatologist. . This is new evidence that extreme weather is spreading quickly and intensely.
The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, gave a name to this situation when it became known that in the first days of July the hottest week on record was recorded. “The only surprise is the speed of change. Climate change is here. It’s frightening. And it’s just the beginning. The era of global warming is over. The era of global boiling has arrived,” he added. The debate arose over why July has been the hottest month in history.
It set a new national temperature record of 52.2°C on July 16 (Turpan city, Xinjiang province, China). The temperature record for continental Europe of 48.8ºC measured in Sicily on August 11, 2021 has not been broken.
Scientists agree that the main cause of the rise in temperatures is the warming caused by gas emissions, in turn the result of the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) in energy production, transportation or agroindustry. But at the same time this year the appearance of El Niño, a cyclical warming phenomenon, has an impact. “All temperature peaks worldwide have coincided with a year in which El Niño is recorded,” says Carlo Buoentempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus climate change service.
More than 100 deaths and about 850 missing have been the balance of the tragic fire in Maui, Hawaii, whose mountains were a death trap on August 8. The wind rushed in with gusts of 100 kilometers per hour that became increasingly drier as they descended. It sucked the moisture out of already dead vegetation and turned the landscape into pure desolation.
The area covered by sea ice in Antarctica has been at record lows all year. To reach an average extent, the frozen surface would need to cover an area around ten times the size of the United Kingdom, compared to the 1981-2010 average.
Increases in temperatures lead to greater warming of the Mediterranean Sea, and “this is associated with phenomena that, in conditions of instability, give rise to violent storms; it is like a chain,” says Marc Prohom.
A compound word that suggests the idea of ??a Mediterranean hurricane, although “these are not hurricanes like those that can occur in the Atlantic basin,” says Rubén del Campo, Aemet spokesperson. These low pressure systems sometimes acquire characteristics similar to those of tropical cyclones (they have a warm core, sometimes even developing an eye with symmetrical cloudiness…), but they are less durable and smaller. And, as has now been proven, they have proven catastrophic, as seen in Greece or Libya. There may be one or two throughout the year throughout the Mediterranean basin and they are usually more frequent in its central and eastern regions. Can they occur on the Spanish coasts. “It seems that they need a greater mass of continuous sea, which is why the eastern area is more favorable, due to its morphology,” says Prohom.
During the summer there have been four heat waves in the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands with 24 days in heat wave situations. If compared to last year it seems little, since there were 41; But this year more than a quarter of the summer days we have been in an extreme situation due to high temperatures. It has been the fourth summer with the highest number of days in this situation, after 2022, 2015 and 2017. Spain registers an increasing trend. The average in the 80s, 90s and first decade of the 21st century was seven days, so this figure is multiplying by three. “The 45 ºC reached in the Empordà were not expected until the middle of the century as extreme temperatures,” says Marca Prohom.
And hellish nights are appearing, a new name not yet consolidated referring to those nights in which the thermometers do not drop below 30 ºC. This is what happened in Malaga, where the minimum night temperature was 31.2 ºC, on July 20. And in one station in Tenerife it did not drop below 37 ºC one night.
“Global temperature records will continue to fall in 2023. The warmest August followed the warmest July and June, leading to the warmest boreal summer in our data record,” explains Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Climate Change Service. of Copernicus (C3S). 2023 is ranked as the second warmest, just 0.01°C behind 2016, with less than four months left in the year.
The oceans recorded their warmest daily surface temperature on record in August and it is the warmest month on record. In June, temperatures on the coast of Ireland were 4 to 5°C above average. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration classified it as a marine heat wave.
Summer in the northern hemisphere (June, July and August) has come to occupy first place on the list of warmest quarters recorded so far on the planet as a whole, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). ) of the European Union. The June-July-August 2023 season was the warmest on record globally by a wide margin, with an average temperature of 16.77°C, or 0.66°C above average. In Europe the average summer temperature was 19.63 °C, 0.83 °C above average, the fifth warmest for a summer.
