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Thermometers above 38 degrees and about a hundred temperature records monthly maximum. This is the balance left by a month of April that, about to end, is already on its way to being the hottest in Spain since 1950. It is also shaping up to be one of the driest on record. And the conjunction of heat and drought have led the Government and several autonomous communities to advance their measures to combat high temperatures.
With 38.8 degrees Celsius (°C), Córdoba airport has been the point of the Spanish geography where the mercury has risen the most in the last weekaccording to the provisional data of maximum temperatures of the network of stations of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). Its weather station has registered up to three consecutive records since Tuesday. Last Thursday, the thermometer marked 37.9 °C in the Seville municipality of Écija. A heat record in April that far exceeded the 32.3 °C recorded on the same dates in 2002.
At least 96 stations in mainland Spain have beaten their records maximum temperature for a month of April and the figure exceeds 200 if consecutive cases accumulate. Madrid, with records in seven meteorological stations, and Badajoz, Jaén and Cáceres, with milestones in six stations in each province, lead a ranking in which up to 34 territories appear.
The episode of high temperatures has affected almost the entire country and this Friday records were still recorded for the month of April in 64 stations. The anticyclone has had special incidence in the Guadalquivir valley, areas of La Mancha and the eastern interior of Andalusia. However, it has not been so extreme in Galicia, the provinces of the Cantabrian mountain range and the Pyrenees, where some weak rainfall has been recorded, nor in the north of the east.
More than 10 degrees above the historical average
The one of the Port of Alto del León, in the Community of Madrid, is the station where the thermometer has distanced itself the most from the average of the maximums for the month of April, with 24.1 °C last Thursday. They are followed by Villanueva de Cordoba (34 °C), the aforementioned Córdoba Airport and the aerodrome station of Granada (36,9 °C).
This episode of abnormal heat has led the Ministry of Health to bring forward the entry into force of the anti-heat plan by two weeks, which will begin on May 15 and will last beyond September 30, depending on the evolution of temperatures. The situation has also forced some city councils and autonomies to anticipate measures.
Catalonia has already activated its plan of preventive measures typical of the summer, while the Seville City Council has reinforced the sanitary services, has included a water distribution point and has added a second trough for horses in full April Fair. In Madrid, the capital will open the first swimming pools on May 13 and has already launched the Madrid Río beach. In addition, the government of the Community has approved a plan that allows adapting the school hours of the schools and the specific surveillance of the correct air conditioning in social or health care facilities.
However, the episode of extreme heat has not affected the entire territory of the peninsula equally. the seasons Gijón, Campus and Cabo Peñas, in Asturiasand the airport of Reus (Tarragona) They are the ones that have distanced themselves the least from their average maximum temperature for the month of April. As the following graph shows, Santander (Cantabria) and Fisterra (A Coruña) have even scored temperatures that are around three points below average.
Towards the warmest April since 1950
This episode of high temperatures could already be the most intense in terms of maximum temperatures for those dates in the Iberian Peninsula since there are records, at least 1950. This was explained a few days ago by the Aemet spokesman, Rubén Del Campo, although he insisted that “we must wait for this heat to end to analyze the temperatures in detail” .
DatosRTVE has compared the normal maximum temperature, calculated as the median of the daily maximums of the period 1991-2020, to the provisional records of the Aemet stations. This first analysis reveals that only 18 meteorological stations on the peninsula have recorded more than ten days of maximum temperatures below normal, almost all located in the north and east of the country.
On the contrary, they are over 80 the reference points in which the thermometer has passed more than 20 days above normal for a month of April. In places like Sea sands (Barcelona), Queen’s Talavera (Toledo) o ayamonte (Huelva) the entire month has been completed with the mercury in exceptional values.
Due to “its intensity and its early nature”, for the Aemet spokesman this episode of heat fits into what is being observed that causes climate change. A scenario in which it should be remembered that excessive temperatures can cause cramps, exhaustion, malaise, dizziness, headache and nausea. But also other symptoms, such as increased body temperature, which could point to something more serious such as heat stroke.
Regarding rainfall, Rubén del Campo has highlighted the scarcity of rain, with cases such as the more than 170 days of drought in Torrox (Málaga) and barely 25% of the normal value of accumulated rain for these dates at the national level. For this reason, the meteorologist considers it quite probable that April 2023 will also end up as the driest in the historical series in Spain as a whole, surpassing April 1995 in this “negative aspect”, when only 23 liters per square meter fell.
“Every time we pulverize more climatic records in less time,” he explained in RNE Mornings the CSIC research professor Fernando Valladares. “The average temperature is going to be dotted with extremes,” said the scientist, who showed “some anxiety about climate inaction” in our country: “we don’t have money to deal with climate change” and “we haven’t finished doing serious things and committed.”
about this information
For the preparation of this news, the daily weather conditions offered by the open data service have been used. Aemet Open Data. The values of the last week are provisional data pending validation extracted from the daily observations of the State Meteorological Agency.
The record for each season arises from comparing these data to the catalog of extreme values of Aemet, consulted on April 24. To obtain comparable data for 2023, only the highest maximum temperature recorded so far this month has been taken into account, discarding records on consecutive days such as that of Jaén Airport in the main count.
The scatter plots of the maximum temperature history for the month of April only show stations that have records for 2023 and have at least 20 years of data. The thermal amplitude curves use as the “normal” maximum temperature the average of the daily maximums of the reference period 1991-2020which the Spanish agency has been using since January of this year.
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