Good news sometimes falls from the sky, but it is always unevenly distributed.
Having crossed the equator of the hydrological year, which began on October 1, 2023 and will end on September 30, 2024, and having already passed the two rainiest seasons, an average of 397 liters per square meter have fallen in peninsular Spain at 10 March, when the normal rate for this period is 362, so it has rained 10% more.
The problem, emphasizes Rubén del Campo, spokesperson for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), is that “there are large regional differences” in that 10% extra.
Thus, “the rains have been clearly above usual in the northwest of the Peninsula and clearly below in the eastern third, especially in the Mediterranean regions and the archipelagos,” details Del Campo.
As for the Aemet accumulation basins - similar, but not the same, to the hydrographic basins - in the Tagus basin, rainfall is around 45% above normal;
and in those of the north and northwest, 32% higher.
On the contrary, in Catalonia, Júcar and southern Andalusia "we do not even reach half of the normal rainfall" and, in the Segura basin, "not even a third."
These copious rainfall collected in the Tagus basin have allowed Aemet to end there, although “very barely”, the long-lasting drought, into which Spain as a whole entered in December 2022. “Other basins, the of Júcar, Segura and Norte and Noroeste, have not become so.
El Tajo, which was, has come out and is the only one that has done so, although very much to the limit,” Del Campo details.
On the other hand, the drought “not only has not been alleviated, but has worsened in the Mediterranean area.”
In summary, “there has been a recovery in the northwest and center of the Peninsula, but a worsening in the east and south of Andalusia” and “practically almost all of Spain is still in a long-lasting drought today,” that of Catalonia “the most intense since there are records” and that of Andalusia, “the longest lasting, eight years now.”
Thanks to the latest storms, the water reserve has grown to 56.8% of its capacity and, although on this occasion the rains have also reached Catalonia, its swamps continue to be at minimum levels and have recovered just 0.1%. according to data released on Tuesday by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
Spanish reservoirs store 31,844 cubic hectometers of water, after increasing in the last week by 1,171, 2.1%.
The cause of this unequal distribution of rain is that so far this hydrological year "a regime of Atlantic storms is predominating, which leaves a lot of rain, especially in the northwest and other areas of the western peninsula, but which arrive very worn out to the Mediterranean".
There is nothing strange about it.
“Some years Atlantic storms predominate and other years the opposite happens, that there are more Mediterranean lows and more storms,” Del Campo contextualizes, without this natural alternation being accentuated by climate change.
There are still six and a half months of the hydrological year, but “most of it has already been sold,” since in the first six months of the year two-thirds of what rains throughout the year usually falls.
“The rainiest seasons are, in this order, autumn and winter, while spring can be rainy, but it is more variable.
Summer is the driest period, it almost never rains much,” recalls the Aemet spokesperson.
And what is spring expected to be like in terms of rain?
The seasonal prediction for the April-May-June quarter, published this Thursday by the agency, does not give a clear signal: there is the same probability that it will be rainier than drier than normal, so anything can happen, details the also Aemet spokesperson Cayetano Torres.
“Only in the Canary Islands is there a higher probability of it being drier,” he clarifies.
The seasonal prediction for summer, unfortunately, is resounding: “There is a greater chance that it will be drier than normal.”
With these predictions in hand, everything inevitably indicates that Spain will not emerge from the long-lasting drought this year either.
“It has to rain a lot, we only get out of droughts with very very very rainy seasons.
The drought of 2017-2018 looked terrible, but the spring of 2018 arrived, which was by far the wettest of the entire historical series, and it was over.
The 1990s also ended with only one winter, 1995-1996, which was extremely rainy.
But on this occasion, despite having been rainier than normal, autumn and winter have not saved us, spring does not seem like it could be one of the rainiest and we do not know anything about what autumn will be like, it is launching a coin toss,” explains the expert.
What also seems very clear with the predictions six months ahead is the same as always, the endless heat.
Aemet predicts that the spring will be “warmer than normal throughout the country, especially in the extreme north of the peninsula, Levante, southwest Andalusia and both archipelagos, where the probability is 70 to 100%.”
And for summer, the map looks “extremely red not only for Spain, but for the entire Mediterranean basin.”
“There is a very high probability, between 70 and 100%, that it will be warmer,” notes Torres.
The warmest winter
Thus, two more seasons of above-normal heat await Spain after a winter that was nothing less than the warmest in the historical series in Spain, which begins in 1961, tied with the winter of 2019-2020, according to Aemet in its climatological balance, released this Thursday.
What's more, a new climate reconstruction report covering up to 1870 reveals that it was “the warmest in at least a century and a half.”
Series of anomalies of the average winter temperature in peninsular Spain since 1961. AEMET
The average temperature in the whole of peninsular Spain was 8.5° in winter, which is 1.9 degrees above normal.
In the Balearic Islands it was also very warm, but in the Canary Islands it became extremely warm, with an anomaly of 2.5°.
Spain has had six consecutive warm winters and there has not been a cold season for six long years - the last one was the spring of 2018.
"What's more, of the last seven seasons, four have been the warmest in the series, one has been the second warmest and another the third warmest, that is, we have had two years in which the temperatures are not only warmer high than normal, but much higher, record high,” laments Del Campo, for whom such an accumulation of anomalies and warm extremes has only one culprit: climate change.
According to Aemet, not even a month was spared from winter, since they had temperatures above average.
In addition, warm episodes were frequent and those that took place between January 21 and February 9 and between February 12 and 22 stood out due to their intensity and duration.
As for low temperatures, there were several episodes with temperatures below normal, but none was a cold wave.
🧵Last winter was the warmest in the historical series in Spain, tied with 2019-2020.
The average temperature was 1.9ºC higher than normal.
The three months (December, January and February) were warm;
Abnormally high temperatures spread throughout the country.
pic.twitter.com/fwzZDGT97I
— AEMET (@AEMET_Esp) March 14, 2024
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