A new wave of severe heat hits Spain and Portugal

Spain and Portugal are suffocating again. Soaring temperatures are hitting the Iberian Peninsula, where the thermometer will panic again in the coming days, less than a month after the last extreme heat wave. According to the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet), mercury is supposed to rise on Monday, July 11, to 41 degrees Celsius in Andalusia and 42 degrees Celsius in the southwest of the country.

This new heat wave, the second in a month, ‘It looks very exceptional’said Ruben del Campo, a spokesman for Aemet. It started on Sunday and can “The last nine or ten days, making it one of the three longest heat waves Spain has experienced since 1975.”He explained to AFP.

The expected maximum should also exceed 35°C in the northwest, where it is generally cooler. According to Aemet, maximum temperatures will be recorded between Tuesday and Thursday. The agency is unable to determine if the absolute temperature record recorded in Spain (47.4 °C near Cordoba in August 2021) can be beaten.

In Portugal, the thermometer climbed to 44 degrees Celsius in some areas over the weekend, favoring the fires, the largest in the city of Ourem in the center of the country.

“Climate change is causing more frequent and intensifying heat waves.”

Ruben del Campo, spokesman for the Spanish Meteorological Agency

In the Agence France-Presse

According to him, the number of such episodes has doubled in the past twelve years in the country. Including the current heat wave, Spain has experienced five episodes of exceptionally high temperatures over the past eleven months. Last May was the country’s hottest month since the turn of the century.

The breeding of heat waves is a direct result of global warming, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Increasing weather and climatic phenomena have had irreversible effects, pushing human and natural systems beyond the limits of their adaptation”write IPCC scientists.