Early warnings when an extreme episode like DANA that hits Spain is approaching “save lives,” as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres summarizes it in a few words.
An early warning system has become essential, since climate change leads to “more frequent and intense extreme weather events,” explains the UN. “They are a proven, effective and cost-effective way to save lives and jobs, land and infrastructure.”
These early warnings work because with them the threats are anticipated, the risks are understood, the warnings are disseminated to the population and they allow us to be prepared to respond, explains the UN’s ‘Early Warnings for All’ initiative.
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However, the alerts or early red warnings that Aemet has issued in recent years – which mean that the meteorological risk is extreme – have even been ignored by various politicians and the right-wing media sphere. In fact, Aemet has suffered a campaign of attacks due to its forecasts in which it relates events such as heat waves, droughts or DANAS with climate change, as scientific evidence shows.
During this last extreme episode, the president of the Valencian Generalitat, Carlos Mazón (PP), went to a press conference on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. in which he lowered the severity to be expected in the Community: “According to the forecast, the storm will It moves towards the Serranía de Cuenca, so it is expected that around 6:00 p.m. its intensity will decrease throughout the rest of the Valencian Community,” he stated.
The Aemet had launched the red level at 7:30 for the south of Valencia and at 9:41 it had been extended to the entire province. At 5:49 p.m., that level of severity was extended until at least 8:00 p.m. Finally, the Valencian Government launched the general alert message at 8:12 p.m. Faced with criticism for the delay in activating the alert mechanisms, sources from the Valencian PP offloaded responsibilities to the central government. “Fundamental rights (mobility, work…) could not be restricted because “there is no decreed state of alarm that would correspond to the government,” they argued. However, it is up to the autonomous communities to launch alerts that recommend citizens limit their movements. Catalonia did so this Wednesday afternoon due to the forecast of heavy rain.
“People should not die from these types of predicted weather events in countries that have the necessary resources to do better,” Liz Stephens, professor of Climate Risk and Resilience at the University of Reading, analyzes for the Science Media Center. “Although a red weather warning was issued for the region with enough time for people to get away from danger, a red warning alone does not communicate what the impact will be and what people should do,” he concludes.
Although a red weather warning was issued for the region in enough time for people to get away from danger, a red warning alone does not communicate what the impact will be and what people should do.
Liz Stephens at the Science Media Center
— Professor of Climate Risk and Resilience at the University of Reading
The general alert messages, which automatically reach all mobile phones, had already been activated previously in the Community of Madrid due to the arrival of a powerful storm in September 2023. After the rains, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida complained because the intensity of the rain on the city had been less than expected in the Aemet alert: “I believe and ask that the Aemet refine the forecasts to the extent possible.”
In the same sense, the newspaper The World published a news item in which it spoke of a “false alarm.” The deputy director of that medium, Jorge Bustos, complained publicly: “What is that Orwellian beeping no matter how much it rains? What is the next step in the State’s intrusion into the citizen’s privacy?” He later deleted that tweet.
In that same episode, the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla (PP), followed Almeida’s lead by declaring: “I call for reflection: if a public body alerts of ‘extreme danger’ it must be very safe, because that has social and economic consequences.” On this occasion, upon seeing what happened in Valencia, it has activated for the “first time” the alert system “so that all mobile phones located in the red warning zone, in this case the Cadiz countryside, receive this message: risk of flooding.” .
Discrediting meteorologists seems to have become one of the latest strategies of climate change deniers, and warnings are part of the job of these meteorologists. “We had never received these insults,” lamented the Aemet spokesperson, Estrella Gutiérrez, in a conversation with elDiario.es. The new secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, Celeste Saulo, summarized the issue of the attacks for this medium: “They are an unscientific wave; Killing the messenger does not solve climate change.”
“We have to keep in mind that the warnings are made for relatively large areas, at the regional level, and then the most extreme consequences are at the specific level, at the municipality level many times, and that depends on many other things that do not have to do with precipitation,” says Enrique Rodríguez Camino, State meteorologist, points out that, as clarified to the SMC. “Between intense rainfall and its destructive power, there is a whole chain of actions that must also be considered.”
Among these other most relevant elements is the uncontrolled urbanism that has made the land waterproof by constructing buildings and infrastructure. Land sealed in this way “increases the risk of flooding,” summarizes the European Environment Agency.
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