The effects of the climate crisis in Spain are accelerating and where it is best appreciated is in the thermometers. The average temperature in the country was 1.7 degrees higher in 2020 than in the pre-industrial era (the period between 1850 and 1900). However, the rate of warming has risen in recent decades and in the last 60 years the accumulated increase is 1.3 degrees, according to the executive summary of the report on the state of the climate in Spain 2020 that the State Agency for Meteorology (Aemet) has presented this Friday. The study warns that, if greenhouse emissions continue at the same rate as until now, by the end of the century the increase in temperature will reach 5 degrees.
Controlling the greenhouse effect emissions that contribute to global warming to limit the rise in temperatures is the central objective of the Paris Agreement against climate change.
Approximately half of the gases emitted accumulate in the atmosphere accelerating global warming and the other 50% is absorbed by vegetation and the oceans.
In its report, Aemet recalls that, despite the reduction in economic activity caused by the pandemic, the concentration of the main gases in the atmosphere continued to grow in 2020. In the case of carbon dioxide, the main one of these gases, the concentration is at levels never recorded in the last 800,000 years, as the World Meteorological Organization has already warned.
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"There can be no public health if there is no basis for environmental health," said Hugo Morán, Secretary of the Environment, during the presentation of the report.
In his opinion, this monographic study on climatic indicators, which has been carried out this year for the second time, is “the descriptive medical part of our reality”.
This reality goes through a concentration of the hottest years in the last decade in the world and in Spain.
In fact, as Rubén del Campo, one of Aemet's spokesmen, has indicated, 2020 is together with 2017 the warmest year in the country since the records of this agency began in the sixties of the last century.
The average temperature was 14.7 degrees.
Something similar happened in the rest of the planet, despite the fact that the climate phenomenon of La Niña occurred in 2020, which is assumed that "it should have helped to make temperatures colder," explained Beatriz Hervella, also a spokesperson for Aemet. .
Future models
Aemet recalls in its report that its models indicate that if global emissions continue to grow at the same rate as up to now - clearly on the rise since World War II, when the use of fossil fuels soared - by the end of the century the increase in the temperature will be 5 degrees from pre-industrial levels.
To help put it in context, Del Campo recalled that in the worst summer on record in Europe so far, that of 2003, temperatures were only 3 degrees above average.
Effects of the storm 'Gloria' in Almenara (Castellón) .Domenech Castelló / EFE
There were three heat waves in the summer of 2020, the report says.
One of them, lasting nine days, was the third longest since 1975. The increase in heat waves in recent years is one of the consequences with the greatest impact of the global climate crisis.
Del Campo has pointed out that the records of warm temperatures have also skyrocketed in recent decades: "Now there are 11 times more records of warm temperatures than records of cold temperatures."
Aemet has highlighted the impacts that these phenomena have on health.
According to reports from the Carlos III Health Institute, in the last five years around 1,800 people have died a year as a result of extreme heat.
The study also addresses in this edition the increase in the temperatures of the marine waters surrounding Spain. According to Aemet, which has used data from Copernicus, a scientific service of the European Commission, the average temperature of these waters was 0.5 degrees above normal. 2020 was the second year with the highest water surface temperature in Spain.
Scientific studies suggest that the increase in water temperature can favor the appearance and virulence of extreme events, such as some types of storms.
Although last year the rainfall in Spain was within normal values, there was a very intense extreme phenomenon.
This is the case of
Gloria
, “an unprecedented torrential rain”, according to Hervella.
"Spain is one of the hot spots of climate change," this spokeswoman warned to refer to the impacts that the country is already suffering.
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