Spain will be one of the countries in the world hardest hit by climate change, according to the report Climate race against time: climate change and extreme weather events in Spain, prepared by the Greenpeace Scientific Unit at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom), where detail trends and forecasts for the next two decades.
“The projections indicate that, if the emissions that cause global warming are not drastically reduced, a hotter, drier, more arid, more flammable country awaits us, with more floods and high-intensity fires and affected by the rise in the level from the sea”, explains María José Caballero, head of Rapid Response at Greenpeace.
According to this report, the rate of warming in Spain is faster than the world average. And so it will continue to be. A warming of 2 degrees is expected in the next twenty years, unless immediate and severe reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions are made.
This warming will affect our weather. For each additional degree of global warming, the response in Spain will be up to 1.5 degrees, with more pronounced increases in areas in the interior of the country. This study estimates an increase in areas that will experience between one and ten days of extremely hot and humid conditions per year.
The number of heat waves and days with extremely hot and humid conditions will increase, which in turn will markedly increase the risk of death from hyperthermia.
The temperature of the sea will also increase, between 1.8 °C and 3.5 degrees by 2100. This will affect the ecosystem, “because warming air temperatures decrease the possibility of adaptation of marine organisms, which could cause extinctions local and large-scale changes.
According to this report, the drought will worsen in the coming years. It will be ten times worse than the current ones, especially in certain areas such as large areas of the Mediterranean, where the frequency of extreme droughts is expected to be between 150% and 200% more likely if the global temperature increases by 2 degrees.
In addition, climate change will increase the risk of having large and intense fires. We are heading “towards more dangerous, rapid and uncontrollable episodes, beyond the capacity of extinction, with a differentiated behavior”, concludes this organization.
