Experts predict Iraq-like weather for Spain in the near future

Source(s): El País

By Victoria Torres Benayas (English version by Heather Galloway)

“Forget about the Iberian peninsula,” concluded a renowned German atmospheric physicist, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, in view of the extreme heat that the south of Europe will have to bear in the not-too-distant future. Dominic Royé, a climatologist, postdoc researcher and lecturer at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain’s Galicia region, quotes Schellnhuber when discussing his latest article on heatwave projections, co-authored by Nieves Lorenzo and Alejandro Díaz-Poso and published in the scientific journal Atmospheric Research. The article indicates a significant increase in the intensity, frequency, duration and impact of these extreme heat episodes; it is predicted that the number of heatwave days will double less than 30 years from now.

According to Rubén del Campo, spokesperson for the Spanish weather agency Aemet, “the worst summers so far will be normal for our grandchildren and will even be considered cool by their children.” In the southern city of Córdoba, for example, where Spain’s highest ever recorded temperature was measured at 46.9ºC in 2017, there will be five days a year at 47ºC or 48ºC. These are temperatures typical of Iraq.

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According to the researchers behind the new projections, heatwaves at currently unimaginable temperatures will increase throughout the Iberian peninsula in both scenarios by an average of 104% by 2050, although in the mean scenario the increase will be more acute in the center and east of Spain, with a 150% rise on the Mediterranean coast and the Pyrenees. As a result, the 23 heatwave days recorded every year between 1971 to 2000 will number 40 this summer, and 53 by 2050 in the intermediate scenario, or 70 in the worst-case scenario.

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