Spain: 2022 was the warmest year on record since at least 1916

Spain met in 2022 the hottest year which has been recorded since at least 1916, the date of the first available data, the national meteorological service (AEMET) announced today.

“2022 was the warmest year in Spain since at least 1916,” the agency announced via Twitter, noting that it was “the first time the average annual temperature (exceeded) 15 degrees Celsius, with almost 15.5°C ».

“Until 2011, 14.5 degrees Celsius had never been exceeded. Since then, this has happened five times,” AEMET added.

After 2022, the two warmest years were 2017 and 2020.

The National Weather Service retrospectively documented average annual temperatures between 1916 and 1961 from individual measurements and statistical models.

Like a part of Europe, Spain was hit in 2022 by heat waves during the summer, which was marked by wildfires of incomparable extent, an excess of mortality and a high level of drought.

“For the first time, two consecutive seasons in the same year (summer and autumn) were the warmest,” AEMET had underlined on December 21 in a provisional report.

The death of some 4,744 people in Spain attributed to heat in the summer of 2022, according to Public Health Institute excess mortality estimates.

In that country more than 3,000,000 hectares were reduced to ash in the 2022 fires, the worst toll since records began in 2000, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

“Considering the rains recorded up to December 15, this is the third driest year on record,” AEMET had noted in its interim report.

Extremely warm weather continues in 2023as record temperatures were recorded in several cities in northern Spain on New Year’s Day.

In Bilbao, the temperature was 25.1°C, the highest temperature ever recorded in January.

“Limitations on water”

Besides, Spain experienced one of the driest years in 2022, only 2005 and 2017 had less rainfall.

Due to this lack of rainfall, Barcelona and other regions of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, were put on drought alert in late November, with water restrictions for farmers, ranchers or industrialists. Residents are also prohibited from filling the pool, washing the house or car.

Water reserves were at 43% of their total capacity at the end of December, compared to an average of 53% over the past ten years, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, to which AEMET falls.

In Europe, the summer of 2022 was the hottest on record, the European Copernicus climate change agency announced in early September.

At least 15,000 deaths are directly linked to the severe heat waves that hit the continent last summer, according to a still incomplete estimate released in early November by the World Health Organization.

Europe is also the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising more than twice the global average over the past three decades, the UN noted in early November.

The increase in heat waves is, according to scientists, a direct consequence of the climate crisis, with greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously increasing in intensity, duration and frequency.

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