Heat waves in June have tripled in the last twelve years, according to the spokesperson for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), Rubén del Campo, in a meeting of meteorologists together with the vice president and minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera.
In that meeting, the Aemet spokesman, Rubén Del Campo, stressed that “in the last twelve years the frequency of heat waves has tripled in this first month of summer.” As he recalled, summers “get longer, they are gaining ground from autumn and, above all, from spring, almost 7 days per decade of the early start of summer.” For this reason, he added, “if the summer lasts longer, it is logical to think that heat waves can arrive earlier and also do so with increasingly higher temperatures.”
“We have an increase of 3 days per decade in the number of heat wave days each summer,” he said.
Currently, “the temperature has risen between 1 and 1.2 degrees and there are 15 hotter days than in the 1970s, according to Del Campo, who added that heat waves affect between 13 and 14 provinces more on average than the ones we had in the eighties. In addition, “tropical nights” are increasing and the temperature of the sea water has risen.
The heat waves and the number of days of days under these episodes of high temperatures registered in the month of June have quadrupled in Spain if the data from 1975 are considered. These events have increased in frequency and extension in the last decades; the most intense episodes, moreover, have occurred mostly in recent years, according to data from Aemet
Del Campo explained that since the study of heat waves began in 1975, AEMET has described twelve heat waves during the month of June, of which seven have been recorded since 2011, while in the previous 35 years there were five. heat waves.
Other Aemet sources indicate that, if all this is translated into days under heat waves, between 2011 and 2022 there was an average of 2.8 days each June; while between 1975 and 2010 the average was 0.7 days. “Therefore, the number of days under a heat wave in June in the last twelve years has been multiplied by four compared to previous years,” says Aemet.
On the other hand, the number of days a year under heat waves has increased in a statistically significant way since 1975: at a rate of about 3 days per decade. Therefore, in current summers we face between ten and twelve more days of extreme heat than in the 1980s.
“Given the number of affected provinces, we also observe a statistically significant increase in the affected area: heat waves are gaining in extension at a rate of 2.7 provinces per decade,” say Aemet sources.
Minister Teresa Ribera stressed in this meeting that “we are launching” a heat wave even “before the start of summer”, and has stressed that these are heat waves that are increasingly “terrifying” and recurring in recent years and are linked to climate change.
Teresa Ribera recalled that “last summer there were 41 days and nights typical of a tropical climate”, for which she has asked the meteorologists to explain what is the best way to explain these meteorological phenomena.
Ribera has announced that, together with the Ministry of Health, the work to launch the Observatory for Health and Climate Change is being finalized with the scientific technical support of the Carlos III Institute.
This observatory seeks to establish a joint response in advance to the impacts of climate change, since “projections indicate that this trend will continue to progress and therefore it is necessary to prepare for more frequent, longer and more intense heat waves.”
The Health and Climate Change Observatory, as indicated by the Ministry for Ecological Transition, will promote the creation of integrated plans that facilitate the application of packages of preventive measures against heat waves and their associated risks, such as fires, increased pollution atmospheric, droughts, diseases transmitted by vectors and food or water transmission.
The current heat wave will last until Thursday, with days in which up to 44 ºC can be reached in points of the valleys of the great rivers of the center and half of its peninsular. “We have at least three more days of very intense heat ahead of us,” said the Aemet spokesman, Rubén del Campo, who detailed that this weekend they exceeded 42ºC in Western Andalusia and southern Extremadura and highlighted the 43ºC reached in Fuentes de Andalucía (Seville) and Montoro (Córdoba) and even 44ºC in El Granado (Huelva).
In the provincial capitals, Badajoz and Córdoba they tied at a maximum of 42ºC this Sunday and early this Monday, at 6:00 a.m., the thermometers exceeded 25ºC in numerous points in the southern half. For example, in Cádiz at that time the mercury registered 27ºC.
In the Sevillian and Cordoba countryside, where the danger is “extreme”, for which reason the red warning has been activated because it could exceed 44ºC on Tuesday and Wednesday, two days in which there will be no significant changes in temperatures or, if anything, some slight decline.
“It will not be until Thursday and Friday when the arrival and a mass of cooler Atlantic air will lead to a marked thermal drop and the first heat wave of the summer of 2023 will come to an end,” the spokesperson has advanced.
The heat wave is fundamentally affecting the central zone and the southwestern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, that is, the Community of Madrid, Extremadura, western Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia, although in other areas such as the Northern Plateau, Aragon , inside the Mediterranean communities and Mallorca the heat is also intense.
