Analysis
Spain’s
deadly floods and severe droughts are two faces of the climate change coin
Ajit
Niranjan
Scientists
say violent weather battering the Mediterranean is a harbinger of what the rest
of Europe can soon expect
Wed 30 Oct
2024 15.45 CET
Residents of
Chiva, a small town on the outskirts of Valencia, can expect a grim future of
worsening drought as the planet heats up and the country dries out. But on
Tuesday, they also witnessed a year’s worth of rainfall in a matter of hours.
The
torrential rains that flooded southern and eastern Spain last night, ripping
away bridges and tearing through towns, have killed 64 people and counting.
Fossil fuel pollution plays a role in warping both extremes of the water cycle:
heat evaporates water, leaving people and plants parched, but hot air can hold
more moisture, increasing the potential for catastrophic downpours.
“Droughts
and floods are the two sides of the same climate change coin,” said Stefano
Materia, an Italian climate scientist at Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. He
said studies have linked droughts in the Mediterranean with the climate
emergency through changes in atmospheric circulation at the same time that
global temperature rise has severely heated the region.
“That means
more energy, more water vapour, more instability – all ingredients fuelling
terrifying storms when atmospheric conditions are favourable,” he said. “The
Mediterranean sea is a timebomb these days.”
Spain –
along with Portugal, Italy and Greece – is already enduring the harsh reality
of what climate scientists call compound hazards and cascading impacts.
Heatwaves are turning forests into tinderboxes, triggering deadly wildfires
that choke cities with smoke. Droughts are drying up soil and stopping the land
from soaking up water when extra heavy rain falls. Scarce water supplies, which
have already forced cities such as Barcelona to adopt emergency restrictions,
leave farms and hotels with less financial cushioning to survive the next
shock.
The damage
that climate breakdown is doing to southern Europe is most startling in heat
mortality figures. On Tuesday, researchers from the Barcelona Institute for
Global Health found climate breakdown was behind more than half of the 68,000
heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022. The heat-related
death toll – which was about 10 times greater than the number of people
murdered in Europe that year – was largest in Greece, Italy, Spain and
Portugal.
Scientists
say the violent weather battering Spain and its neighbours is a harbinger of
what the rest of Europe can soon expect. A survey from Eurobarometer in May
found 61% of Spanish people “totally agree” that environmental issues have a
direct effect on their daily lives. The figure is nearly double the EU average
and behind only Malta and Cyprus. Northern European countries had a far higher
share of people who only “tend to agree”.
Exposure to
violent weather events, such as the floods in Spain on Tuesday, may spur
support for climate action, but experts warn against overstating the effect.
Polling in the aftermath of Australia’s devastating 2019 bushfires found that
people who denied the scientific link with climate change were “unmoved” by
personal experience of the fire, although overall support for climate action
was greater among those affected. A recent UK study found exposure to floods
and heatwaves increased acceptance of climate science, particularly among
right-leaning voters and climate sceptics, but had a negligible impact on
people’s environmental behaviour.
Climate
experts say the floods should serve as a reminder to reduce planet-heating
pollution and improve early-warning systems and rapid response plans. The
downpour comes a month after deadly floods struck central Europe, west Africa
and southeast Asia, and two weeks before diplomats meet for the UN Cop29
climate summit in Azerbaijan.
“The tragic
consequences of this event show that we have a long way to go,” said Liz
Stephens, a climate risk scientist at the University of Reading. “People
shouldn’t be dying from these kinds of forecasted weather events in countries
where they have the resources to do better.”
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