2023 will close as the second warmest year in Spain, just one tenth behind 2022 and with 42 records for days with high temperatures and none for cold days, according to data from the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). And the winter doesn't look any better. Warmer than normal is expected again throughout the country and rainier in the northwest and center of the peninsula.
Gone are winters with normal temperatures for the season or very cold ones, in which temperatures exceeded -30 degrees. That record is held by a town in the "Spanish ice triangle", an area located between the provinces of Teruel and Guadalajara.
On December 17, 1963, the minimum temperature record in a populated area occurred, according to data from the National Meteorological Service (SMN), as the current Aemet was then called: at the Calamocha-VOR observatory, in the municipality of Fuentes Claras (Teruel). ), -30 degrees were recorded. In the towns of Molina de Aragón (Guadalajara) and Monreal del Campo (Teruel), they stayed close (-28 degrees).
These freezing temperatures were repeated for several nights. There were no precedents, so the area earned the consideration of "Spanish Cold Pole or the ice triangle", as the agency recalls in a thread on X (formerly Twitter).
There are several reasons that explain why the geographical strip between Teruel, Calamocha and Molina de Aragón (Guadalajara) is considered the "Spanish ice triangle".
"These episodes are favored by the orographic profile of the area and the confluence of three factors after an episode of heavy snowfall: clear skies, very weak or calm wind and completely snowy ground," explains the agency.
Regarding the orographic profile, the Jiloca River valley is a wide plain sandwiched between the Universal Mountains and the Sierra Palomera, with an average elevation of close to a thousand meters. In addition, it has very open horizons that do not protect it from incoming air of arctic or continental polar origin and the valley itself is responsible for channeling and retaining the incoming cold air.
At a meteorological level, Aemet continues, the retention of cold air triggers nocturnal radiative cooling, especially on clear nights and with snowy ground. This situation persists until the atmospheric circulation changes, although temperatures are around 0 degrees during the day.
Another factor to take into account is the periodicity. "Since the end of the 19th century, there have been more than a hundred episodes in which, at some point in the ice triangle, temperatures below -20 degrees have been observed," the agency adds.
