In the coldest week in recent years in the Region, the geographer
David Espín Sánchez (Bullas, 30 years old) has read his doctoral thesis ‘Risk of frost due to thermal inversion and agricultural incidence in the Segura River Basin District’. He defended it this Friday before a court of the University of Murcia, via telematics, and the doctoral student obtained an outstanding. The right prize for a scientific adventure that since 2016 has led him to explore the cold poles of the Southeast of the peninsula
in search of exceptionally cold places in normally warm territory.
The source of data that has fed his academic work is the
FrostSE project, launched together with his colleague from the Department of Geography of the UMU
Victor Ruiz Alvarez and a group of twenty ‘meteo’ fans to monitor the minimum temperatures in hidden corners of the Autonomous Community and nearby areas of Albacete, Granada, Almería and Jaén. The result is
a collection of astonishing meteorological data in the upper Segura basin and the demonstration that just over a hundred kilometers in a straight line from places where people walk in shirtsleeves, such as the city of Murcia, the thermometer can plummet in all seasons.
One of the thermal sensors placed by David Espín’s team, during a periodic review. /
For example: while in summer 30ºC is widely exceeded almost anywhere,
in the sinkhole of Pozo Romero (Siles, Jaén) a temperature of -8ºC was registered last August. Not far from that Segureña Siberia, on a plateau located between Cazorla and Santiago de la Espada, it is common for the temperature to also drop below zero degrees in July and August. It is the Campos de Hernán Perea (Jaén), an area of 5,000 hectares with sinkholes and poljés at more than 1,600 meters of altitude that could be a worthy setting for ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘The Lord of the Rings’. The frozen heart of the Southeast is an inhospitable territory where snow accumulates for most of the winter. That is why it is not surprising that one of the four sensors installed there – the one in Monterilla – has scored the record so far for the FrostSE Project: -24.2ºC, not too far from the historical minimum registered in Spain during the early hours of Wednesday to Thursday. Past: -35.8ºC in Vega de Liordes (Picos de Europa, León).
The frozen heart of the Segura basin is in the Campos de Hernán Perea, with a record low of -24.2ºC in 2018
“I remember that in March 2018 we went up to the Campos de Hernán Perea to check the thermometers and we were practically buried by the snow,” recalls David Espín.
“We had to walk for hours in waist-deep snow to extract the data, and then we saw that the previous month it reached -24.2ºC. We thought it was incredible.
The cold can be very intense not only in lonely heights, but also where people live: with the data in hand, Pontones (Jaén), where the Segura River is born, is the coldest inhabited nucleus in southern Spain. David Espín and his team have only captured a minimum of -12ºC there, but
a 2005 Aemet record revealed an unusual -21ºC.
Thermal inversion
Thanks to the 65 monitoring points of the FrostSE Project located in strategic enclaves of the Southeast, we know that the coldest pole in the Region of Murcia is La Risca (Moratalla), in Campo de San Juan, with minimum values of -12ºC, «although these days I am sure that it will have dropped to -15ºC », David Espín adventure. Due to movement difficulties due to snowfall this week,
They have not yet been able to verify the extent of the cold wave that is still hitting the peninsula.
That temperatures drop so low in some places is due to the phenomenon known as thermal inversion:
cold air is heavier and tends to settle at the bottom of valleys and depressed areas. When it also coincides that the nights are stable and there is no wind, the cold is collected as in a bucket. The points in the Region where the highest thermal inversions occur are Campo de Béjar (between Caravaca de la Cruz and Moratalla) and Campo de San Juan.
Installation of a protective guard for a thermometer by two researchers from the FrostSE project. /
Self-funded and forced to frequently replenish stolen sensors
–They cost between 20 and 25 euros–, the researchers of the FrostSE Project have deployed a network that in the Region covers cold poles such as Purias, Avilés and Doña Inés (Lorca), the peak of La Selva (Mula) and numerous points in the Northwest, such as Revolcadores and the Rambla de La Rogativa (Moratalla), Hoya Lóbrega (Cehegín) and Singla, La Junquera and Benablón (Caravaca de la Cruz).
David Espín defends the importance of discovering these “icy microclimates” to “highlight unknown spaces, advance in meteorological research” and, why not,
stimulate a possible climatic tourism in empty Spain.
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