In Portugal, 18 people died following the successive passage of depressions Kristin, Leonardo and Marta, which also caused many hundreds of injuries and displacement.
A study released this Thursday indicates that climate change intensified the torrential rains that hit the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco in early 2026, killing more than 50 people and forcing the displacement of thousands of others.
The report of a group of scientists who study the link between extreme weather phenomena and climate changenote that the Rainiest days in the region are now about 30% wetter than in pre-industrial timeswhen the climate was 1.3 degrees Celsius (°C) colder.
Between January 16 and February 17, nine storms lashed that area.
Em Portugal, 18 people died following the successive passage of depressions Kristin, Leonardo and Marta, which also left many hundreds injured and homeless.
The total or partial destruction of houses, businesses and equipment, the fall of trees and structures, the closure of roads, schools and transport services, and the cut of energy, water and communications, floods and floods were the main material consequences of the storms, which mainly affected the regions of Centro, Lisbon and the Tagus Valley and Alentejo.
Em Grazalemaone of the hardest hit municipalities in southern Spain, more than a year’s worth of normal rain fell in just a few daysaccording to WWA.
“The volume of water observed in places like Grazalema was impressive,” said David García-García, a climatologist at the University of Alicante in Spain and co-author of the study, describing the situation as a “massive shock” to infrastructure and soils.
Impact of climate change
This study confirms that “the warming of the atmosphere provoked by our collective carbon emissions is the to drive to one pattern of more intense rain“, he added.
“This is exactly how climate change manifests itself: climate patterns that were previously controllable are turning into much more dangerous disasters”, declared Friederike Otto, from Imperial College London, in the United Kingdom, and another of the study’s authors also cited by the news agency France-Presse.
WWA believes that, no northern Portugal and in northwest Spain, the rain intensity be currently about 11% higher than that of the pre-industrial period.
Regarding the area of southern Iberia and northern Morocco, the data showed contrasting trends, so researchers were unable to determine the impact of climate change on rainfall.
According to WWA, a “locked” anticyclonic system over Scandinavia and Greenland generated a series of storms in Western Europe earlier in the year that created wetter than normal conditions, with the humidity being amplified by “abnormally warm waters” in the Atlantics.
