Spain and Portugal are suffocating again. Very high temperatures are hitting the Iberian Peninsula, where the thermometer will panic again in the coming days, less than a month after the last extreme heat wave. According to the Spanish meteorological agency (Aemet), the mercury should rise on Monday July 11 to 41°C in Andalusia and 42°C in the south-west of the country.
This new heat wave, the second in a month, “seems quite exceptional”, said Rubén del Campo, the spokesperson for Aemet. It started on Sunday and could “last nine or ten days, which would make it one of the three longest heat waves that Spain has experienced since 1975”he explained to AFP.
The maximum expected should also exceed 35 ° C in the northwest of the country, where it is generally much cooler. According to Aemet, the most extreme temperatures will be recorded between Tuesday and Thursday. The agency is unable to indicate whether the absolute temperature record recorded in Spain (47.4°C near Cordoba in August 2021) could be beaten.
In Portugal, the thermometer rose to 44 ° C in some areas during the weekend, favoring fires, the largest of which, in the town of Ourém, in the center of the country.
“Climate change is causing more frequent heat waves and making them more intense.”
Ruben del Campo, spokesman for the Spanish weather agencyat AFP
According to him, the number of these episodes has doubled in the last twelve years in the country. Including the current heat wave, Spain has gone through five episodes of exceptionally high temperatures over the past eleven months. Last May was notably the hottest month of May since the beginning of the century in the country.
The multiplication of heat waves is a direct consequence of global warming, according to the latest IPCC report. “Increasing weather and climate extremes have had irreversible impacts pushing human and natural systems beyond their adaptive limit”write the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.