The heat wave with record temperatures at the end of April in the south of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria would have been "almost impossible" without the influence of human-caused climate change. Warming made the occurrence of such an extreme event at least 100 times more likely than in a scenario without climate change. This is indicated by a climate attribution analysis made by climatologists from the World Weather Attribution.
At the end of April, these areas experienced a heat wave that caused temperatures that had never been observed at this time of the year (from 36.9°C to 41°C in the four countries). Now, scientists from Morocco, France, the Netherlands, the US and the UK – but none from Spain – have assessed how human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of this event between on April 26 to 28.
The researchers found that climate change made the heat wave at least 100 times more likely and led to temperatures up to 3.5°C higher than they would have been without climate change. "As the planet warms, these situations will become more frequent and will require long-term planning, including the application of sustainable agricultural practices and effective water management models and policies," noted Fátima Driouech , associate professor at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, one of the authors of the study.
In this analysis, meteorological data and computer model simulations of the current climate (which has already increased by 1.2 °C since the end of the 19th century) were compared with the climate of the past, following the method for review by other experts. The study confirms that extreme temperatures are increasing faster in this region of the planet than climate models predict. This finding "shows that we need to better understand the regional effects of climate change so that we can adapt to even more extreme heat in the future," says Sjoukje Philip, a researcher at the Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
"Until general emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped, global temperatures will continue to rise and events like these will become more frequent and severe," say these experts in an official statement. The fact that the high temperatures arrive "at a time of the year when it should rain, makes the situation worse" caused by the drought, stressed Friederike Otto, co-founder of the World Weather Attribution.
"This rapid attribution exercise shows that without human-induced climate change, this situation would not have come to this," says Manola Brunet, professor in the Department of Geography at the URV. "This unusually warm event has been intensified by climate change, in a region of the planet, the Western Mediterranean, which is warming at twice the rate observed on a global scale", adds Brunet, president of the International Climatology Commission. "It is already a proven fact that heat waves do not only come during the summer season, but also during the spring and autumn months", he adds.
