SPAIN IS IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION

Filomena

It is Saturday, the 8th of January of 2021. It is half past ten in the morning and
Carmen waits for her train at the train station of Alicante. Christmas holidays are over. After
spending two great weeks with her family and friends in her hometown, Carmen has to
leave Alicante and travel to Madrid, where she has been living for the last 3 years.
Carmen studies Politics and International Relations at the Rey Juan Carlos
University, in the south of Madrid. She is finishing her 5th semester of her bachelor. She’s
on exam period and has an exam of Theoretical Politics on Monday. What she doesn’t
know is that she is not going to be able to take that exam.

It is 12:00. Carmen is sitting on the train on her way to Madrid. She is studying.
Suddenly she realizes it is snowing on the outside. At first Carmen is excited to see snow
after so long. However, she soon realizes that it is snowing heavily and that she can barely
see beyond 5 meters through the window. In that moment, Carmen receives a call from
her mother. She sounds very concerned about the snow and tells her about how
dangerous the situation is and how every media is talking about it. The phone call drops. A
few minutes later the train stops and over the megaphone the train driver says that due to
the heavy snowfall the train tracks have been completely covered with snow and for the
same reason the trip will be interrupted for an indefinite time.

Filomena had arrived. Storm Filomena was a extratropical cyclone in early January
2021 that was most notable for bringing unusually heavy snowfall to parts of Portugal and
Spain, with Madrid recording its heaviest snowfall since 1904. Due to it, Carmen and
around 300 more people stayed in that train for more than 10 hours. A trip that should have
lasted an hour and a half turned into a 10-hour trip. During her stay on the train, Carmen
suffered from cold and fear.

But it was not only that train. At least half of the transport in Spain was paralyzed for
two days. Supermarkets short of supplies, shops closed, people locked at home…
Filomena brought chaos.

Meteorological changes

In recent years, a great number of adverse phenomena have been occurring in
Spain. Due to the climate crisis, the average temperatures in Spain have raised about 1.5
degrees Celsius. Moreover, according to a recent report from Mediterranean Experts on
Climate and Environmental Change (MedECC), Spain and other Mediterranean countries
are likely to see dramatic temperature increases in the decades to come. For this reason,
there have been twice as many heatwaves and torrential rains in the last few years.
The spokesman for the AEMET (The State Meteorological Agency of Spain) Rubén
del Campo, stipulates that this will bring longer periods of drought and rain in the next
decades and climate will become more extreme. So, is Filomena an isolated case or
consequence of climate change?

A large number of experts have determined that Filomena is not an isolated case. A
fact that helped determine this is that while Filomena was breaking five records for the
lowest minimum temperature in the center of Spain, the situation had swung to the oposite
direction in the east coast of Spain. Particularly in Alicante, where the thermometers
reached almost 30ºC, the highest temperature ever recorded in January by AEMET.
Between the -25.2ºC registered in some regions in the center of Spain and the 30ºC
registered in Alicante, there was a difference of 55ºC, an unprecedented temperature
range in Spain.

Energized weather?

Ángel Rivera, a veteran Spanish meteorologist, said that this kind of phenomena
occur because the atmosphere has extra energy in it caused by the arrival of heat
provoked by the accumulation of greenhouse gases. He usually describes the weather as
“energized”, capable of giving rise to numerous storms and adverse weather conditions.
Researchers have found that regional temperature increase will be of 2.2°C in 2040
and around 4°C in 2100. This means that if temperatures rise in that way, Spain will have a
climate similar to the current climate in North Africa. Moreover, Spanish summers are
probably going to warm more than winters. This means that periods of excessively hot
weather are going to become more frequent and severe, which has dangerous impacts: in
may result in desertification of vast swaths of Spain, devastating agriculture; severe
flooding in the north of the country, because of increased severe storm activity; and it also
can involve complications in the health of many people.

But, despite the increase in temperatures and the increased frequency of
heatwaves to come, cold snaps will not disappear. According to the newspaper “El País”,
the researcher Julio Díaz Jiménez, from the Carlos III Health Institute, established that
cold naps are viewed as being of less concern because the effects are diluted with the rise
of temperatures. But he warms that the more we get adapted to the heat, the more we will
become unadapted to the cold: not only us, but all the species of living beings. This will
probably mean an enormous direct impact on mortality and a sharp drop in reproduction in
animals, and damages in the plants tissues caused by frosting and extreme snowfalls.

The future of Spain is uncertain and scary. For that reason, we have to prevent
Spain from entering a meteorological chaos with all our efforts. We must urgently mitigate
the effects of climate change and save the country from deterioration. Although you may
think that your actions will not have any kind of repercussion or you believe that the real
change comes from above, any help is good. The expression “think globally, act locally”
has never made as much sense as it does within the context of the climate change.

Bibliography

• https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2021-03-05/has-the-weather-gone-mad-thiswinter-in-spain.html
• http://www.exteriores.gob.es/Embajadas/WASHINGTON/en/Noticias/Pages/Articulos/
  At-COP26,-President-Pedro-S%C3%A1nchez-announces-that-Spain-will-increaseclimate-finance-by-50-to-1-35-billion-euros-a-year-fro.aspx
• https://elpais.com/clima-y-medio-ambiente/2021-02-03/los-35-peligros-del-cambioclimatico-mas-urgentes-para-espana.html
• https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55617359
• https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/sociedad/2021/01/21/aemet-aumenta-riesgoborrasca-hortensia/00031611225067567113477.htm
• https://www.bbc.com/news/58159451
• https://www.transporteprofesional.es/noticias-actualidad-transporte-logistica/
  transporte-de-mercancias/el-temporal-filomena-provoca-el-caos-del-transporte-yparaliza-parte-de-la-flota-espanola
• https://www.publico.es/politica/espana-recupera-transporte-y-carreteras.html
• https://elpais.com/espana/madrid/2021-01-12/filomena-cronica-de-una-catastrofe-acamara-lenta.html
• https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Climate-and-COVID-19
• https://english.elpais.com/society/2021-08-12/weather-experts-on-spains-heatwave-asummer-like-this-will-be-considered-cold-in-30-years-time.html
• https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2021-03-05/has-the-weather-gone-mad-thiswinter-in-spain.html
• http://www.exteriores.gob.es/Embajadas/WASHINGTON/en/Noticias/Pages/Articulos/
  At-COP26,-President-Pedro-S%C3%A1nchez-announces-that-Spain-will-increaseclimate-finance-by-50-to-1-35-billion-euros-a-year-fro.aspx
• https://www.agroberichtenbuitenland.nl/actueel/nieuws/2020/02/18/which-are-climatechange-impacts-in-spain