The climate emergency is making intense torrential storms more frequent in Murcia

Image: cars washed into the Mar Menor during the storm of September 2019

Aemet warn that events like Storm Gloria are becoming less exceptional

Following the third instance of widespread flooding the Region of Murcia in just over four months this week as Storm Gloria brought torrential rain and heavy snow to the whole of eastern Spain the regional delegation of the State meteorological agency Aemet has warned that the likelihood is that one of the effects of the climate emergency in the Region will be that when rain falls in the Costa Cálida it will do so with more intensity than has usually been the case in the past.

Juan Andrés García Valero, the Aemet spokesman in Murcia, explains that as the atmosphere of the planet warms its capacity to retain water vapour is increasing, and for this reason there is more moisture released when the conditions are right for rain. By the same logic, Sr García Valero hypothesizes that if the body of cold air from the north had reached Murcia in September, the rain could have been even more intense than the torrential downpours which left Los Alcázares and other towns on the shore of the Mar Menor flooded on Monday and Tuesday.

In other words, with a warmer climate the extremes of rainfall become more pronounced, in terms of both long periods of drought and spectacular and prolonged cloudbursts.

Aemet have also released some provisional data regarding the effects of Storm Gloria in the Region of Murcia, confirming that the accumulated precipitation reached 110 millimetres in Benizar in the municipality of Moratalla, between 70 and 90 millimetres in the Campo de Cartagena and around 70 millimetres in central Murcia. The rain was fairly generalized, with the least affected areas being in Lorca (40 mm) and the north of the Region, where only 32 mm fell in Jumilla.

It is worth remembering that the “gota fría” storm of September last year has been described by meteorologists as the severest to hit the Region of Murcia since 1950, calling to mind the disastrous “Riada de Santa Teresa” of 1879, when the whole of the countryside around the city of Murcia was flooded and over 1,000 people lost their lives. Thankfully no deaths can be attributed to the floods of this winter in Murcia, but in Spain as a whole the death toll during Storm Gloria has now risen to 13.

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