Barcelona is facing the prospect of having its water cut off as the city bakes in 23C weather in January.
AEMET, Spain’s equivalent of the Met Office, has warned that “numerous records” have been broken both in Barcelona and in several cities around the country.
They said records had been broken “very generally” in other parts of Spain during an unseasonably warm winter.
Alongside Barcelona Valdezcaray, Córdoba, Ávila, Cádiz, and Haro were also experiencing record-breaking heat.
Following the problems, one weather expert said the heat could have consequences for “water management”.
AEMET’s report also says that it wasn’t easy “to single out a province” as so many of them were suffering through hotter-than-average months.
The report said that the regularity of records being broken was “increasing very rapidly”, when it came to the daily maximum temperatures.
However, despite the alarm the records have caused, they said the anticyclones causing the high temperatures were “typical” for the time of year.
They added that no single event should be directly attributed to climate change in this instance.
The phenomenon may be normal for the time of year, but reports suggest that winters in Spain are getting warmer.
The report added that soon summers would be longer and winters would be shorter; a trend AEMET says began 40 years ago.
AEMTET’s report has been backed up by meteorologist Roberto Granda who told El Espanol: “There are data that indicate that this January is going to be one of the warmest or the warmest since records have been kept in many areas, especially in the east of the country.
Mr Granda added that “this recent episode in January 2024 has been exceptionally intense, as attested by the many records that have been broken”.
He added that factors such as snowmelt had “implications for water management” which could impact water supply in some areas.
Spain’s high temperatures are of major concern as thoughts turn to the spring and summer months. Last year, Europe suffered consecutive heatwaves that pushed the mercury consistently above 40C.
As a result, farmland was affected in many areas and there were a string of wildfires across the continent.
