2022 was the hottest year in history for which we have records. And in this 2023, we are on our way to breaking this record. Spain has experienced the driest and hottest April since 1961.
A total of 24 weather stations of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) have exceeded their maximum temperature records for a month of April. The new records easily exceed previous records, even by more than four degrees.
The drought is so serious that several autonomous communities, including Catalonia, have been forced to implement limitations on the use of water. For its part, the central government also decided for the first time in history to advance the start of the state campaign against forest fires by a month and a half in light of Aemet’s alert that Spain will have unusually high temperatures long before summer.
In this context, the effects of this heat combined with the severe drought are beginning to be felt in our environment. The official Twitter account of the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet) has shared an image captured by the European Union’s Copernicus satellite.
In it you can see two snapshots in which the same Extremaduran field appears in 2022 and now. The photographs are accompanied by the following explanation: “Extremadura has lost its typical green color, as evidenced by comparing the Sentinel images of May 2, 2022 and 2023.”
