Spain has just signed its start to the warmest summer in the historical series. There it is nothing. Between June 1 and July 15, the average temperature was 3.3 ºC above normal.
In these six weeks, we have suffered two official heat waves, an extreme episode that did not become extreme and, according to AEMETwe are already on the rise of the next wave this Sunday.
So much so that the heat begins to be the least of it. The central question of 2026 is simple: if we cross the heat threshold three times in five weeks, isn’t something broken in that threshold?
The third wave does not exist yet. I don’t want to mislead anyone. AEMET has issued an information note (it is not yet a special notice) and this is because, although we know that there will be a generalized thermal rise, the criteria remain extremely strict.
Spokesman Rubén del Campo talked about temperatures “extraordinarily high” and maximum temperatures of up to 44 ºC in the southern half. But the duration, extent and strength is yet to be defined.
What is clear is that, if it were not, it would be just barely.
That’s why what happens next week doesn’t change the general picture. Not only would it be three or four extreme heat episodes in six weeks, but some climatologists such as Jorge Olcina They also add the “Saharan advection at the end of May” and speak of four episodes in eight weeks.
With old reference periods, we would probably be in those terms. But how explained José Ángel Núñez and Rubén del Campo On the agency’s official blog, the definition is not touched, precisely, to see things like what we are seeing. That is, what the threshold is doing is clearly showing that everything is changing.
According to the agency’s own studybetween 2001 and 2025 Spain registered 91 heat waves compared to 43 in the period 1976-2000, and the days under the wave went from 210 to 510. This summer does not fit the threshold, it is true. But it fits perfectly with the trend.
And that’s the problem. The ISCIII MoMo system, the statistical model that indicates excess mortality, attributed 3,649 deaths to the heat last summer, the second worst figure of the decade. The problem here, as we pointed out a few days ago, is that in 2026 we will already we have spent half of that excess before the dog days begin (the worst part of summer).
Meteorology has shown us that, at any moment, the situation can change suddenly. What remains is to wait, but the feeling that the world is changing faster than our adaptations to it has stopped being a fear and has begun to become something very real.
Image | Meteociel
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Xataka
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Javier Jimenez
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