Staff Writer
According to the national weather service, Spain had its warmest spring in more than 60 years of records, with average temperatures about two degrees Celsius higher than usual.
The AEMET agency reported that the nation also saw its second-dryest spring on record, trailing only that of 1995, as a protracted drought damaged its important agriculture industry.
One of the worst-affected EU nations in terms of climate change is anticipated to be Spain, which experienced its warmest year on record in 2022.
The average temperature, according to AEMET, was “14.2 degrees Celsius (57.5 degrees Fahrenheit), which was 1.8 C hotter” than usual.
It said it was “extremely hot, surpassing 1997 — the hottest spring to date — by 0.3 C.”
According to AEMET, the spring of 2023—a three-month period that started in March—was the warmest spring in Spain history.
With local temperatures up to 20 C above average in late April, Spain had a severe heatwave that exacerbated the drought.
The first part of May saw slightly above-average temperatures that later plummeted to below-average levels due to strong rains that have helped the drought considerably but not significantly.
There was no rain up until virtually the middle of May, according to AEMET spokesman Ruben del Campo.
“The situation has somewhat improved with the rains in the second half of May.”
The drought, however, “which is measured over the longer term, has not been resolved,” he claimed.
The amount of rainfall later in the year will determine how long it lasted, he said.
It would take 20 percent more rain (than usual) in the autumn to make up for the 20 percent rainfall deficit we’ve observed so far in this hydrological year, he said.
Heat increasing
Spain has recently seen an increase in heatwaves as well as less frequent and scarcer rains.
Del Campo stated that AEMET meteorologists noted “35 days of record-breaking heat, when temperatures were above the seasonal average” last year.
One record every ten days, according to it.
According to AEMET, Spain had the driest first four months of the year since records have been kept in 1961. The nation only received less than half the usual quantity of rain.
According to experts, some areas of Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years. As a result of the persistent drought, several farmers decided not to plant crops this year.
Spain, the largest supplier of olive oil in the world and the top producer of fruits and vegetables in the EU, has suffered greatly due to the lack of rainfall.
The capacity of Spain’s reservoirs, which store rainwater for use in the dry months, is still less than 50%, which is much lower than the 10-year average of roughly 68 percent.
Temperatures reached record highs in April due to the extreme heat that blanketed the Iberian peninsula and parts of North Africa. In southern Spain, the temperature reached 38.8 C.
The April heatwave was deemed “exceptional” by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), whose scientists research the connection between extreme weather occurrences and climate change.
Looking ahead, AEMET stated that all signs pointed to the summer of 2023 being hotter than usual as well.
Despite del Campo’s assertion that it was “unlikely” to beat the heat of summer 2022, the report issued a warning that “there is a high probability of a hotter-than-normal summer in the entire country.”
