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The first heat wave of the summer in our country has been made to beg. While our Mediterranean neighbors broke temperature records, Spain has had, with episodes of intense heat in some more or less specific regions, a relatively moderate summer for what we are used to. But the respite ended on Tuesday and from this Friday the most suffocating days await us that this heat wave will bring us, which, according to Rubén del Campo, spokesman for the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET), will last until next week : "In principle, it will send on Tuesday, although that day it may still exceed 40 ºC in the Guadiana and Guadalquivir valleys, and other areas of Andalusia," he tells this newspaper. That temperature was exceeded on Thursday in many parts of the Peninsula,with peaks of almost 45 degrees in the south of the country.
According to the meteorologist,
since 2011 there has only been one summer without heat waves, that of 2014.
Is it very unusual that there are none until almost mid-August, like this year? "Of the 61 heat waves registered in the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands in Spain since 1975, 18 have started in August (about a third), so it is not strange that there is a heat wave this month, but it is true that
most They occur in the month of July,
"says Del Campo, who also recalls" that in recent years, we have had very intense heat waves even in June, as happened in 2019 and 2017. " In 2018, the only heat wave there was also started relatively late, on July 31.
"
We are in the heat of the canicular period
(from July 15 to August 15), when, statistically, in Spain we reach higher temperatures," says Mar Gómez, head of meteorology for the eltiempo.es portal. "For example, we have to go back to 1987 to remember a powerful heat wave that had an anomaly of 4 ºC. The longest in the month of August occurred in 2003, with 16 days of duration and affected, nothing more and nothing less, than 38 provinces. But it was not the one that covered more territory, this took place in 2012 reaching 40 Spanish provinces ", details the meteorologist.
Let us remember that
to speak of a heat wave there must be an episode of at least three consecutive days
in which at least 10% of the measurement stations register maximums above an established threshold temperature (the criterion used is the percentile 95% of the series of maximum daily temperatures for the months of July and August during the period 1971-2000).
That is, there may be days of extreme heat that are not considered waves.
Sudden wind in Madrid
As an aperitif of what awaits us, Wednesday's day was already very suffocating, and was associated with a sudden episode of strong wind that surprised the people of Madrid around 8.30 pm: "Sometimes, the result of intense heat and atmospheric conditions that favor instability, storms are generated, which in certain cases leave little precipitation, but abundant electrical equipment and strong gusts of wind, "explains Del Campo.
According to Mar Gómez, "this wind was associated with the storms that occurred and not with the heat wave itself.
It is common for storms to be accompanied by intense wind, electric shocks or even hail."
Is the Spanish heat wave linked from a meteorological point of view to those living in Italy and Greece? "The high pressures that were affecting the central Mediterranean in the middle and upper levels of the troposphere in previous days are moving towards our territory. Although
the air mass that is going to affect us is different
from the one that has caused such high temperatures in those countries, the approach of these high pressures is helping to inject into Spain an extremely warm air mass with a North African route, hence
the skies are cloudy due to the presence of suspended dust
, "explains Del Campo.
Regarding whether there will be more heat waves in the coming weeks and what the rest of the summer will be like, Gómez points out that they still cannot predict if there will be other episodes like this one "because it is something that we must analyze week by week. We know August could end with values above the average in much of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, "he says.
"Current forecasting models show a
trend towards a hot second half of August.
Not as
hot
as these days, but we will probably continue with more heat than usual until the end of the month after the post-heat wave respite," agrees Del Campo.
More extreme events
The Spanish heat wave comes in the same week that the IPCC, the group of climate scientists linked to the UN, warned in its Sixth Assessment Report on how climate change is already causing more extreme phenomena. The forecast is also that these will be more frequent and intense in the future. Both Rubén el Campo and Mar Gómez point out that from a meteorological point of view they are already observing this trend.
"In the case of Spain, between 2011 and 2020 there were twice as many heat waves as in the previous three decades (24 heat waves that decade compared to 10 to 12 in each of the previous decades).
On droughts Although it is necessary to carry out more in-depth studies, longer periods without rainfall are beginning to be observed
in some areas of our country, especially on the Mediterranean side, "says Del Campo.
"Episodes of heat such as the one we are experiencing are increasingly frequent and will be even more so in the coming decades. There is scientific consensus that the increase in the number and intensity of these episodes is related to climate change," says Gómez .
"It is virtually certain that extreme heat (including heat waves) have become more frequent and intense in most regions since the 1950s, while extreme cold (including cold waves) have become less frequent and less severe ".
In addition, the meteorologist emphasizes, "in Spain we are observing how summer - the season most affected by climate change - is lengthening about nine days on average per decade, lasting five weeks longer than in the eighties."
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