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WEATHER

Wednesday is likely to be one of the hottest days in Spain in 73 years

Temperatures are expected to hit 44C in Spain on Wednesday August 9th, as 40 of the country's 50 provinces are on alert and the average national temperature is so high it will "probably be one of the hottest August days since 1950" according to the national weather agency.

Published: 9 August 2023 16:09 CEST
Wednesday is likely to be one of the hottest days in Spain in 73 years
A woman covers her head with a fan during a heatwave in Cordoba, southern Spain on August 8, 2023. The Iberian Peninsula is bearing the brunt of climate change in Europe, witnessing increasingly intense heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)

With huge forest fires raging across southern Portugal for the fifth successive day, Spain’s weather service warned that the average temperature across the country could hit a 73-year record.

“This will probably be one of the hottest five August days in 73 years,” said AEMET, the state meteorological agency, with almost the whole country under orange or red weather alerts.

A total of 21 provincial capitals will reach at least 40 degrees Centigrade: Ciudad Real and Córdoba (44); Granada, Jaén and Toledo (43); Albacete (42); Bilbao, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Logroño, Madrid, Teruel, Valladolid, Vitoria and Zaragoza (41), and Badajoz, Burgos, Palencia, Pamplona, ​​Seville and Zamora (40).

Forty of Spain’s 50 provinces have at least a yellow alert for hot weather, 29 for temperatures between 37C and 43C.

In places such as Álava, Burgos, Córdoba, Cuenca, Granada, Guipúzcoa, Jaén, Madrid and Vizcaya the mercury could hit 44C. 

Only A Coruña, Alicante, the Balearic Islands, Barcelona, ​​Castellón, Girona, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Pontevedra, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Tarragona, as well as the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, will escape the sweltering heat.

Winds and extreme heat are also driving fires that have devastated 15,000 hectares of trees in neighbouring Portugal over the past few days.

The biggest blazes are in the southern Odemira region, where more than 1,500 people have been evacuated with the fires reaching the Algarve, a hugely popular tourist destination.

But firefighters tackling the wildfires said they were bringing them under control Wednesday, with a fall in temperatures and greater humidity at the coast helping stem the spread as hot air moves east.

Experts say the recurring heatwaves, which have been getting longer and more intense, are a consequence of climate change.

The Iberian Peninsula is bearing the brunt of climate change in Europe, with droughts and wildfires becoming more and more common.

Spanish firefighters were using up to a dozen water bombers to slow the spread of the flames around Valencia de Alcantara in Extremadura close to the border with Portugal.

“We evacuated our clients to a hotel in Alcantara,” said Joaquín Dieguez, the owner of a holiday cottage. “But we are really worried because we have an enormous forest here with century-old oak trees. It’s awful,” he added.

First estimations suggest that 350 hectares of trees have gone up in smoke. The blaze comes after 573 hectares were destroyed in wildfires in Portbou in Catalonia in the northeast, with 450 acres of trees lost by another fire near Bonares in Andalusia in the south.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

‘Far hotter than normal’: Spain set for scorching summer after rainy June

Rainy periods have marked June so far in parts of the country, but Spain’s meteorological agency has warned that it could still have one the hottest summers on record.

Published: 20 June 2024 09:43 CEST
'Far hotter than normal': Spain set for scorching summer after rainy June

Spain could be set for a “far hotter than normal” summer this year, with experts predicting that it could be one of the hottest on record. This is according to forecasts by Spain’s state meteorological agency (Aemet).

Aemet spokesman Rubén del Campo stated that “there’s a high probability that temperatures will be much higher than normal and that this summer will be among the hottest 20 percent on historical record.”

READ ALSO: 2023 was second-hottest year on record in Spain

He added that the probability of a scorching summer is between 70-100 percent in most of Spain, and that the unusually warm weather could be felt most in the northern half of the peninsula, as well as the eastern Canary Islands.

Aemet posted some weather forecast maps to its X/Twitter account in recent days, with the entirety of the Spanish mainland and islands covered in dark red, meaning a high probability of abnormally high temperatures. “The high probability” of a heatwave, it said, “extends to the rest of southern Europe and northern Africa.”

This follows something of a stop-start June with rainy periods in many parts of the country. Del Campo admitted that so far “it seems that the summer hasn’t started” because temperatures are “slightly” lower than normal for the time of year, but stressed that Aemet forecast models predict that the intense heat will not take long to arrive. 

A marked rise in temperatures is expected for this weekend, although they could drop again next week before going up again as high summer approaches, according to forecasts.

With regards to rainfall, it seems it will likely also be a dry summer with little rain. Del Campo predicted “a summer with less rain than usual, especially in the north and inland peninsula”, where there is a 50-60 percent probability of rainfall below historical averages for the time of year:  “The most likely scenario is that of a quarter with less rainfall than usual,” he added.

Though an unusually wet Easter period helped to refill some of Spain’s dwindling reservoir reserves, a long period of dry weather will likely worsen Spain’s ongoing drought conditions. The problem is particularly bad in Catalonia and Andalusia.

READ ALSO: Will drought restrictions affect summer holidays in Spain?

Looking back on spring temperatures, Aemet data shows that it was also one of the warmest on record. Del Campo stressed that it was “the eighth warmest spring of the 21st century and the tenth since the start of the historical series in 1961.”

The average temperature during spring was 13.1C, which is 0.7C above average values for the 1991-2020 period. “Eight of the ten warmest springs on record have been recorded since 2006, further evidence of climate change,” Del Campo said.

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