More Than 200 Dead, 1900 Missing in Valencia

Before and after.

The extraordinary downpours were driven in part by higher temperatures in the Mediterranean, a largely enclosed sea whose warmth is a store of energy that can only be released via evaporation, creating the conditions for intense storms. Francisco Martín León, a meteorologist at global weather network Meteored, said the Mediterranean was acting as a “petrol can” by feeding water vapour — the fuel for rainfall — into the atmosphere.

Scientists say that process has been exacerbated by climate change. “Then the fire that ignites it for us is a cold front or area of low pressure” that crashes into that humidity, as occurred this week, he said. In Spain the phenomenon is known as Dana, an acronym for a high-altitude isolated depression.

The Mediterranean, he noted, was increasingly behaving like the warmer Caribbean Sea. The warmer body of water helps to form hurricanes that can devastate the coasts of the US, Central and South America, as well as the region’s islands.

“The two seas have the same characteristics and we’re starting to see very similar phenomena occur in both of them for one simple reason,” Rodríguez said. Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent, in part because of its proximity to the Arctic, where melting snow and ice which reflects the sun’s rays is giving way to the darker ground which absorbs heat.

Marilena Oltmanns, a scientist at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, said the Mediterranean had warmed twice as fast as the global average for oceans in the past 30 years, based on data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.