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The existing water level in the nine reservoirs in the internal basins of Catalonia has fallen below 15% and is the lowest percentage of dammed water in all of Spain.
The current drought that Catalonia is suffering has already broken all historical records. This is corroborated by data collected by the professor of the Faculty of Geography and History of the UB and member of the Water Research Institute of the UB, Javier Martín Vide. Specifically, it can be stated that the drought that affects the internal basins of Catalonia – the Ter and Llobregat rivers, among others – has no equivalent in a period of at least two hundred years, in terms of precipitation collected in the area. from Barcelona.
“The fact that the three driest years of the entire annual rainfall series of the Fabra Observatory of Barcelona, which begins in 1914, have been the last three -2021, 2022 and 2023- has a negligible probability of occurrence. We are facing an absolutely exceptional situation,” declares Martín Vide. The existing water level in the nine reservoirs in the internal basins of Catalonia has fallen below 15%, and this is the lowest percentage of impounded water in all of Spain. The UB professor warns that “it is not only a pluviometric and hydrological drought, but also an agricultural and ecological one, due to the negative effects on agriculture and ecosystems, and a socioeconomic one, with effects on most economic sectors.” .
Javier Martín Vide has compared the rainfall of the last three years for Barcelona (2021-2023) with the series of annual accumulated precipitation anomalies (reconstructed) for Barcelona, from the Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya. The conclusion has been that only at the beginning of the twenties of the 19th century, three years in a row were observed with a rainfall anomaly equal to or greater than that recorded in the last three years. Therefore, it can be said that eastern Catalonia has to face the worst drought in the last two hundred years.
The professor has also statistically analyzed the complete annual rainfall series of the Fabra Observatory of Barcelona (1914-2023), which belongs to the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. The data indicates that the three years with the least water in the series (110 years) are the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, with just over 50% of the average.
Looking to the future, Martín Vide points out that seasonal rainfall and temperature do not show clearly higher than normal rainfall from now until late spring, while the average temperature will continue to be higher than what would be expected at this time.
