This weekend the map of the southeast of the peninsula has turned red again. The maximum alerts issued by the AEMET in the Valencian Community and in Almería it has returned us to a reality that seems to repeat itself with a disturbing cadence. And this is precisely the question we can ask ourselves in this case: are these events of a more usual way?
In a short way. What the data tells us From the last 15 years of analysis, it is yes. The long answer is more complex and involves a Mediterranean that works like gasoline increasingly volatile for these phenomena.
What the data says. If we look back, the perception that ‘it used to rain, but not like this’ has very important scientific support. The analyzes carried out by the AEMET on extreme rainfall between 1965 and 2020 show a fairly clear pattern: storms with torrential rains are not only more frequent, but are more extensive and violent in the 21st century.
The turning point seems to be in the last decade. The 2010-2020 period concentrates an anomalous number of extreme events, with the storm glory in 2020, setting previous records that the DANA of 2024 has pulverized. Furthermore, recent publications in EarthArXiv and compilations of Copernicus confirm this trend: the Spanish western Mediterranean is suffering an intensification of convective episodes.
It is not a cycle. It is something that may come to mind, thinking that this is a streak that may be cyclical and that in the future the frequency may be decreasing. But the reconstructions dendrochronological based on tree rings they indicate that the intensity of the Levant events is outside the natural variability observed in previous centuries.
The engine of disaster. To understand why we have more violent storms now, we have to go back to basic thermodynamics, since the Mediterranean is registering unprecedented surface temperatures.
This made, for example, the Valencia DANA of 2024 to be between 12 and 15% more intense than this anthropogenic climate change. The equation used by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is relentless: For every degree the atmosphere warms, it can retain 7% more humidity. Something that directly affects meteorological events.
The example. When a DANA that It’s literally a layer of cold air. At altitude it encounters an unusually warm Mediterranean, the result is a massive injection of water vapor. This is what Millán, historic director of CEAM, had been warning for years: we have turned our maritime basin into a pressure cooker. In this way, warming not only provides more water to precipitate, but also intensifies the force with which it does so and therefore greater destruction.
The future. What is worrying is not only what has happened, but what the models say is going to happen. The projections cited by experts indicate an increase in up to 61% in extreme rains in the Mediterranean region under high emissions scenarios.
Reports from the University of Zaragoza and AEMET indicate that, although the total number of rainy days could decrease in the future, the days that it rains will do so torrentially. Specifically, for the coasts of Valencia and Alicante, they are projected increases greater than 20% in intensity of extreme precipitation. This forces us to prepare containment plans that have us prepared for possible natural disasters.
Images | Jason Sung
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