On August 11, a 58-year-old man died in the Córdoba town of Montilla due to heat stroke. He was harvesting on a farm at 10 in the morning when he began to feel dizzy and collapsed. The emergency services came to treat him, but without success. That day it reached 44 degrees in Montilla and a good part of Spain was on red alert, an extreme alarm that, however, becomes more common over the years and leaves a dramatic underside. In total, 11,016 people have died from heat since June, according to the Summer Attributable Mortality due to Heat in Spain (MACE) application. For months, in June 1,966 people died from the heat; in July, 3,616, and in August, the deadliest month, 5,434.
Spain spent more than half of August subjected to the heatwave. There were two heat waves, but so extensive that they covered 16 of the 31 days of the month. Thus, it is not surprising that August 2023 has become the warmest month since records exist (1961), only equaled by August 2003, and has completed an extreme summer in the country that has had a lethal consequence.
Heat-attributable mortality
in summer 2023
Updated data
September 10
Source: FIC
Heat-attributable mortality
in summer 2023
Updated data
September 10
Source: FIC
Mortality attributable to heat in summer 2023
Data updated on September 10, 2023
Source: FIC
The summer of 2023 has been the second with the most heat mortality of the six covered by the historical record of this tool. The first, with a big difference compared to the rest, was that of 2022, which resulted in 15,309 deaths. Behind it was that of 2020, with 10,784, and in similar figures, that of 2019, with 10,770, both above 2021, with 9,336, and 2018, with 8,501.
Heat-attributable mortality
in recent years
Updated data
September 10
Source: FIC
Heat-attributable mortality
in recent years
Updated data
September 10
Source: FIC
Mortality attributable to heat in recent years
Data updated on September 10
Source: FIC
Because although the feeling is that it has never been as hot in Spain as this summer, the data shows that there have been areas that, at least in July, became a kind of climate refuge, something that did not happen in 2022. «This year we have experienced many temperature records, but there have been parts of Spain, such as the Atlantic coast, that have been spared the heat for part of the season. That did not happen in 2022, which was a year of high temperatures that also affected the entire peninsula,” explains Dominic Royé, scientist at the Climate Research Foundation (FIC).
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Roye, Aurelio Tobías, from the CSIC, and Carmen Íñiguez, from the University of Valencia, have developed the MACE application, which uses daily mortality data from the Mortality Monitoring System (MoMo) and the average temperature calculated by the State Agency of Meteorology (Aemet) to more accurately estimate the number of deaths due to the heat.
“We have experienced many temperature records, but some parts of Spain were spared extreme heat for part of the summer”
Dominic Roye
Foundation for Climate Research (FIC)
Aemet is preparing its final summer report, which it will present in the coming days, but its preliminary reports show that August was overall a very warm month, with an average temperature in mainland Spain of 24.8 degrees, 1.8 percent. above average. Specifically, temperatures were extremely high in large areas of the southern plateau and central and western Andalusia, and very warm in the rest of peninsular Spain.
During August, there were two heat waves in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands. The first occurred between the 6th and 13th, and reached 45 degrees in some parts of the province of Valencia and Andalusia. During the second, between the 18th and 25th, temperatures exceeded 40 degrees in large areas of the interior of the peninsula and the Cantabrian Sea, where abnormally high values were recorded. On August 23, the Basque Country reached 45 degrees.
Although it did not reach the extraordinary levels of August, July was also a warm month. According to the Aemet historical series, it was the sixth warmest July and the fifth in the 20th century. The average temperature was 24.3 degrees, 1.2 degrees above the average, and left two heat waves, between the 9th and 12th and between the 17th and the 19th, in addition to “remarkable” warm episodes in the days 2 and 3 and between 29 and 31.
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