The big question is what happens if this is the new normal?

There is only one piece of information that summarizes what has happened in this country since January 1: that the accumulated rains since January 1 exceed three times the normal value (for the average of the years 1991-2020). What’s more, most of this rainfall has not been concentrated in the north (there are areas of the Cantabrian coast that they have hardly received water), but in the center, the south and some areas of the northeast.

No one can be taken by surprise by all this. It has rained unspeakably in Spain and that is being noticed in things like there are 96 reservoirs above 90%. But the most interesting thing is not that, the most interesting thing is why all this is happening.

Let’s talk about atmospheric circulation. “It’s outrageous how (…) he’s been behaving in recent weeks,” said meteorologist González Alemán a few days ago. And he is right to such an extent that “although there seems to be a tendency toward change, the pieces still fit together to continue bringing atmospheric rivers with abundant precipitation to the Iberian Peninsula.”

But what is interesting is not so much this anomaly as that “the global causes that cause this state of circulation (with the succession of many storms and atmospheric rivers) are unknown.” And, when the AEMET scientist says ‘unknown’, he is not referring to possible mechanisms or teleconnections; It doesn’t even talk about specific gears. It talks about the culprits of causing such mechanisms and gears.

And all this comes about a runrun: that people are beginning to wonder if this is a symptom of the changes in the Atlantic Ocean over the ones we carry years talking.

We already know that climate change increases extreme phenomena. The data of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) they are clear and they show that, indeed, they have increased since the 1970s. Specifically, they have multiplied by five over the last five decades.

According to your calculationsin the 1980s, 1,400 incidents were recorded – its tables include extreme weather, climate and water phenomena – and in the 1990s, just over 2,200. In the first decade of the 21st century, 3,500 were reached and the trend continued.

Questions, questions and more questions. In this sense, It is logical to ask us whether climate change is updating the probabilities so that extreme events, like these rains, become more frequent. What if we have been years obsessed with desertification and what we find, suddenly, is a disproportionate amount of rain in the most (climatically) fragile areas of the peninsula?

It seems like good news, but it is full of problems. And, as I often repeat, we tend to have a stereotyped view of global warming and we forget where it makes a real difference: in the ability to put our infrastructures in check more criticism. More rain, not just more rain, is (as we have seen these days) a terrible threat that can force the displacement of thousands of people.

Are we going there? That’s the big question, of course. And González Alemán is right that we should not write causal checks that science is not able to pay. You have to study everything in detail to see what is really happening.

But that cannot be a justification for doing nothing. Our water system has just suffered the biggest stress test in recent history and if we don’t analyze what has happened, anything could happen next time.

Image | AliciaMBentley

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