Madrid (EFE) ºC at its peak on Monday.
Thus begins the episode, a consequence of the entry of a mass of warm air from North Africa, the clear skies and the strong insolation “typical of these dates”, according to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), which this Sunday has given warning for high temperatures in 9 autonomous communities and has put a tenth on alert for storms.
The Aemet foresees that Sunday and Monday will be the peak days of the heat wave, days in which the maximum may even exceed 44 ºC, although from Tuesday the temperatures will gradually drop until they are completely normalized on Thursday and put end to episode
On Tuesday, as detailed by Aemet, a cooler air mass is expected to penetrate the Iberian Peninsula from the north, and thus the country will gradually cool down until Wednesday, the last day of the heat wave.
This Sunday, it is foreseeable that the maximum will touch 42 ºC in areas of the peninsular southwest, especially in the south of Extremadura and in Andalusia; in the Guadiana and Guadalquivir valleys temperatures can reach 44 ºC.
On Monday, as Aemet has advanced from its Twitter account, the maximum could reach 45ºC in Seville.
In large areas of the southern half of the peninsula, as well as in areas of the northern and northeastern plateau, these levels will not be reached but 35 degrees will be exceeded.
The nights will be tropical, with lows that will not drop below 20 degrees on the Mediterranean coasts and in the southwest quadrant of the peninsula.
10 communities on alert
Andalusia, Aragon, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura and Madrid are on orange alert this Sunday due to a significant risk of heat, while Castilla y León, Murcia and the Valencian Community are on yellow warning, also due to high temperatures, and La Rioja by strong storms.
The Aemet warns that Huelva may suffer a maximum of 43-44 ºC, while in Cádiz, Córdoba, Jaén, Seville and Badajoz it is expected to reach 42 ºC; at 40 ºC in Ciudad Real, Toledo and Cáceres; and at 39 ºC in Zaragoza, Lleida, Madrid, Valencia and Granada.
Murcia, Huesca, Teruel, Ávila and Salamanca, for their part, will experience maximum temperatures of up to 38ºC; Tarragona up to 37 ºC and Barcelona, Valladolid, Zamora, Albacete, Cuenca and Guadalajara would stay at 36 ºC.
A good part of the country is also on alert for storms: the Aemet has placed a yellow warning in the community of Madrid, Extremadura, Aragón, La Rioja, Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha, where storms with strong or very strong gusts are expected. and potentially accompanied by hail
Summers with more extreme heat and longer
Summers are subject to more and more episodes of extreme heat due to climate change, confirms the World Health Organization itself, which estimates that between 2000 and 2016, the number of people exposed to heat waves, “one of the risks most dangerous natural resources”, increased by 125 million.
And not only is the heat more intense, but the summer period lasts longer: from the Aemet they detect a trend of prolonging summers in Spain, which on average are now one month longer than in the past, something that “does not imply necessarily that each summer is longer than the previous one”, the meteorologist Benito Fuentes, from the Valencia delegation, qualifies in an article on the Aemet blog.
“During the last decade, there have been longer and shorter summers, but looking at a longer period shows an increasing predominance of longer summers and an increase in their duration,” Fuentes writes.
Since the 1940s, the summer period has lengthened by more than 30% in the middle of the country and even exceeds 50% in the east-northeast, he points out, to emphasize that the trend “is not uniform” and exceeds in a few points more than a month and a half of elongation.