The heat wave is over and now it’s time to take stock. The heat has broken numerous records, such as the maximum temperature captured at the Bercalona weather station, Fabra (38.9º), or the maximum registered in a month of August at the Jerez de la Frontera airport (45.8º). The heat wave also left other changes in historical records.
3/10. Three of the hottest days in Spain have been given during the newly finished heat wave, according to Data from the State Meteorology Agency (Aemet). Among them stands out on the 17th, with an average temperature of 28.99º, it would have been the hottest day of the heat wave and the fourth hottest day in the period between 1950 and 2025 in peninsular Spain.
In this particular “Top 10” of Aemet, they also appear on August 11 and 12, which with average temperatures of 28.75º and 28.85º would be placed, respectively as the seventh and sixth warmer days of the historical series.
The “Top 3”. And what about the hottest days of which you have a record? You don’t have to go far back in time to find the three warmest days of this particular series. According to agency data, the three warmest days in peninsular Spain were recorded in the 21st century.
In order, these would be on August 23, 2023, with an average temperature of 29.1; on August 10, 2012, with 29.31º; and on August 14, 2021, when an average temperature of 29.58º Celsius was reached.
Different data, same photo. Aemet’s list is not the only one that highlights the intensity of the last heat wave with respect to the records we had. The list published by the page Datadictindicates that five of the ninetest days of the last 70 years occurred during this heat wave, highlighting again on the 17th, when the estimated average temperature was 29.86º.
As in the Aemet list, they also highlight on the 11th and 12th, although this list also includes on the 15th and 16th among the hottest days since we have observations.
The discrepancy between the estimated values in each of the lists can be explained by the different methodology used when calculating the “average temperature”. According to Aemet, the calculation was carried out from the average of the maximum and minimum temperatures values, averages to which geostatistical techniques were applied to estimate an average value for the peninsular territory.
Unleashed temperatures. Let’s use the method we use, the data maintain coherence in something: the last heat wave has been very intense. More generally, the 2025 is being a warmer summer than it is usually common. The month of June was marked by a persistent warm anomaly.
While the month of July was less intense (we could even see negative temperature anomalies), August has had an extremely warm start. This seems to indicate that, despite the thermal descent that we still have ahead, the heat will consolidate as an indisputable protagonist of this last station.
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Image | ECMWF
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