Repeated heatwaves occurred in Spain from May to October, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius in much of the country. Aemet said in December that, with the exception of March and April, the months of 2022 were “warmer than normal, particularly May, July and October.”
According to the Spanish weather service, last year was also one of the driest. Only in 2005 and 2017 there was less precipitation. Barcelona and most of Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region have imposed water restrictions due to lack of rain.
The extremely dry and hot year also supported forest fires. According to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), more than 300,000 hectares of land have been devastated in Spain – for more than two decades.
High temperatures last summer also killed about 4,750 people, according to an estimate by a public health institute. The estimate is based on the increasing number of deaths recorded during this period.
And the new year started with unusually high temperatures in Spain as well. At the airport in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao, it measured 25.1 degrees on New Year’s Day – roughly the city’s average temperature in July. It was the city’s highest temperature ever recorded in January.
(SDA)