Many countries around the world are already grappling with extreme weather patterns, including scorching heat and drought in Europe that has led to wildfires, crop damage and water shortages. use. According to Spain's national weather agency (Aemet), the average temperature for the whole of 2022 in this country is 15.5 degrees Celsius, the highest since the data began to be recorded in 1916. It was also the first time that the average annual temperature in Spain exceeded 15 degrees Celsius.
Temperatures in Spain increased continuously as successive heat waves affected the country from May to October 2022, with many times the temperature across most of the country exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. In a preliminary report last month, Aemet said that except for March and April, the remaining months of 2022 are hotter than usual, especially May, July and October.
2022 is also one of Spain's driest years, with only the third lowest rainfall after 2005 and 2017. At the end of December 2022, many reservoirs in Spain only reached 43% of their storage capacity. , which is 53% below the 10-year average. The city of Barcelona and the region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain have adopted measures to limit water use due to lack of rain such as banning the use of clean water to wash houses, cars or to pump into swimming pools, while reducing water use. for irrigation.
According to estimates by a public health institute, heat is also the cause of 4,744 deaths in Spain in the summer of 2022. Meanwhile, according to the European Union's monitoring satellite service EFFIS ( EU), unusually hot and dry temperatures have fueled severe forest fires that have burned more than 300,000 hectares of land in Spain.