Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

WILDFIRES

Heavy rainfall helps contain huge wildfires in Spain’s Valencia region

Heavy rainfall on Wednesday night has helped contain huge wildfires raging in two areas of Spain's Valencian Community.

Published: 18 August 2022 12:07 CEST
Heavy rainfall helps contain huge wildfires in Spain's Valencia region
The entire Valencian Community remains on extreme alert level due to the risk of forest fires throughout the region. Photo: CESAR MANSO/AFP

A record-breaking heatwave and historically low rainfall have combined to cause wildfires across Spain this summer, with thousands of hectares burned in southern Extremadura and as far north as Asturias. 

This week the eastern Valencia region has struggled with two major fires. In Bejís, 70 kilometres northwest of Valencia, strong winds contributed to spread the blaze which has so far burnt up 10,000 hectares of land and forced the evacuation of 1,500 people.

READ MORE: 

In the south of the region, another fire began when lightning hit the Vall d’Ebo area in Alicante province late on Saturday night. Like in Bejís, strong winds caused the blaze to spread and burned 11,000 hectares. The fire has forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 people, according to Valencia’s regional government.

In the Vall d’Ebo, locals were evacuated from the municipalities of Famorca, Facheca, Tollos, Beniaia, Benimassot, Benirrama and Beniali. 

In Bejís, the municipalities of Toràs, Bejís, Sacañet and Teresa were evacuated.

However stormy weather overnight has offered some respite to locals and firefighters and emergency services tackling the blazes. In Bejís, rains have helped party extinguish the flames, and down in Alicante heavier rain has all but done the job of the fire brigade for them. 

Between 14 and 20 litres of rain per square metre were recorded overnight in Bejís, which have significantly reduced the flames firefighters are facing, and in Alicante, around 40 litres/sqm of rain in 12 hours allowed emergency services to confirm on the morning of August 18th that there were no longer any active flames in the Alicante area.

READ ALSO: What to do and what to avoid if you witness a forest fire in Spain

“The perimeter is more stable after the rainfall. There has been a small reproduction in the Benimassot area, but it is already controlled,” emergency services said.

The entire Valencian Community remains on extreme alert level due to the risk of forest fires throughout the region.

Wildfire season

So far this year, Spain has suffered 391 wildfires, fuelled by scorching temperatures and drought conditions, which have destroyed a total of 271,020 hectares of land, according to the latest figures from the European Forest Fire Information System.

This year’s fires in Spain have been particularly devastating, destroying more than three times the area consumed by wildfires in the whole of 2021, which amounted to 84,827 hectares, the figures show.

Scientists say human-induced climate change is making extreme weather events, including heatwaves and droughts, more frequent and intense. They in turn increase the risk of fires, which emit climate-heating greenhouse gases.

READ MORE: ‘Thousands of hectares’ destroyed by wildfire in Spain

Fires have blazed across Europe, particularly in France, Greece and Portugal, making 2022 a record year for wildfires on the continent.

In Portugal, a wildfire brought under control last week reignited Tuesday in the UNESCO-designated Serra da Estrela natural park, the civil protection agency said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

WEATHER

Does Spain use cloud seeding?

Some voices online blamed cloud seeding for flash flooding in Dubai recently. Does Spain use this weather modification technique and is it being harnessed as a means of combatting severe drought in the country?

Published: 30 April 2024 11:06 CEST
Does Spain use cloud seeding?

The internet was awash with images of dramatic flooding in the UAE two weeks ago, in which parts of the country saw more rainfall in a single day than it usually does in an entire year on average.

The UEA government stated that it was the most rainfall the country had seen in 75 years and an incredible 10 inches of rain fell in the city of Al Ain.

Predictably, the freak weather event sparked fierce internet debate about the causes and consequences among climate change activists and climate change sceptics. The cause, in particular, struck a chord with certain subsections of the internet and many were asking the same question: did ‘cloud seeding’ cause this biblical downpour?

But what exactly is cloud seeding? Does Spain use it? And with the country’s ongoing drought conditions, should it be using it?

What is cloud seeding?

According to the Desert Research Institute: “Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow by introducing tiny ice nuclei into certain types of subfreezing clouds. These nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form. After cloud seeding takes place, the newly formed snowflakes quickly grow and fall from the clouds back to the surface of the Earth, increasing snowpack and streamflow.”

Cloud seeing is used by countries around the world, not only in the Middle East but in China and the U.S, usually in areas suffering drought concerns. The process can be done from the ground, with generators, or from above with planes.

Does Spain use cloud seeding?

Sort of, but on a far smaller scale and not in the same way other countries do. In places like China and the U.S, where large swathes of the country are at risk of drought, cloud seeding is used to help replenish rivers and reservoirs and implemented on an industrial scale.

In Spain, however, the technique has been for a much more specific (and small scale) reason: to avoid hailstorms that can destroy crops.

This has mostly been used in the regions of Madrid and Aragón historically.

But cloud seeding isn’t something new and innovative, despite how futuristic it might seem. In fact, Spain has a pretty long history when it comes to weather manipulation techniques. Between 1979 and 1981, the first attempts to stimulate rainfall took place in Spain, coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation.

“In 1979, in Valladolid, different techniques were developed to observe the local clouds but they did not meet any possible conditions for cloud seeding experiments. The project came to a standstill,” José Luis Sánchez, professor of Applied Physics at the University of León, told La Vanguardia.

This sort of cloud seeding, as used abroad, doesn’t really happen in Spain anymore. Rather, when it’s used it’s done to protect crops on a local level. Spain’s Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge are responsible for authorising cloud seeding, but there are only a handful of current authorisations to combat hail, such as the one granted to the Madrid’s Agricultural Chamber combat hail in the south-east of the region.

As of 2024, it is believed that no regions have requested cloud seeding (whether by generator or plane) to ‘produce’ more rain.

So, cloud seeding isn’t currently used like it is in countries such as the U.S., China, and the UAE. But should it, and could it solve the drought issue in Spain?

An aircraft technician inspects a plane’s wing mounted with burn-in silver iodide (dry ice) flare racks. (Photo by Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP)

Spain’s drought conditions

Spain has been suffering drought conditions for several years now. Last year the government announced a multi-billion dollar package to combat the drought conditions, and several regions of Spain have brought in water restrictions to try and maintain dwindling reservoir reserves. 

READ ALSO:

At times in Spain in recent years it has felt as though another temperature or minimum rainfall record is broken every other day. The drought conditions are particularly bad in the southern region of Andalusia and Catalonia, where, despite heavy rain over Easter, reservoirs in the region are at just 18 percent capacity, the lowest level in the country.

So, could cloud seeding be used in Spain to help alleviate some of the drought conditions? Yes and no. Seeding is not the only answer to drought, but could theoretically be used as one option among many.

“It’s just another tool in the box,” Mikel Eytel, a water resources specialist with the Colorado River District, told Yale Environment 360 magazine: “It’s not the panacea that some people think it is.”

This is essentially because cloud seeding does not actually produce more rain, rather it stimulates water vapour already present in clouds to condense and fall faster. For there to be a significant amount of rainfall, the air needs significant levels of moisture.

That is to say, using cloud seeing to try and stimulate more rain may help Spain’s drought conditions in a small way, but the difference would be marginal.

“It’s not as simple and may not be as promising as people would like,” respected cloud physicist Professor William R. Cotton, wrote in The Conversation. 

“Experiments that produce snow or rain require the right type of clouds with sufficient moisture and the right temperature and wind conditions. The percentage increases are small and it is difficult to know when the snow or rain fell naturally and when it was triggered by seeding.”

SHOW COMMENTS