Spain experienced in 2022 its hottest year recorded since at least 1916, the date of the first available data, the national meteorological agency (AEMET) announced on Monday.
"
2022 was the hottest year in Spain since, at least, 1916
," the agency said on Twitter, stressing that it was "
the first time that the annual average temperature (exceeded) 15°C
" .
, with nearly 15.5°C.
“
Until 2011, 14.5°C had never been exceeded.
Since then, this has happened five times
,” AEMET added.
Behind 2022, the two hottest years were 2017 and 2020. The AEMET specifies that it retrospectively established the average annual temperatures between 1916 and 1961 from isolated measurements and statistical models.
Like part of Europe, Spain was hit in 2022 by several scorching heat waves during the summer, marked by fires of unparalleled amplitude, excess mortality and a high level of drought.
“
For the first time, two consecutive seasons in the same year (summer and autumn) were the hottest in the series
”, had underlined the AEMET on December 21 in a provisional report.
4,744 deaths due to heat and 300,000 hectares burned
The deaths of nearly 4,744 people in Spain are attributable to heat in the summer of 2022, according to excess mortality estimates from a Public Health Institute.
This country has also seen more than 300,000 hectares reduced to ashes by fires in 2022, the worst toll since the start of measures in 2000, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
"
Taking into account the rains recorded until December 15, this is the third driest year of the historical series
", noted the AEMET in its provisional report.
Water reserves were at 43% of their capacity at the end of December, against 53% on average over the last ten years, according to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, on which the AEMET depends.
Read alsoClimate: 2023 will be “one of the hottest years on record”
In Europe, the summer of 2022 was the hottest on record, the European climate change service Copernicus announced in early September.
At least 15,000 deaths are directly linked to the severe heat waves that affected the continent last summer, according to a still incomplete estimate made public in early November by the WHO.
The European continent is also the one that is warming the fastest, recording a rise in temperatures more than twice the global average over the past thirty years, noted the UN in early November.
The multiplication of heat waves is, according to scientists, a direct consequence of the climate crisis, with greenhouse gas emissions increasing in intensity, duration and frequency.
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