Climate change is making extreme downpours in Spain heavier and more likely, scientists say

(31 Oct 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Valencia, Spain – 31 October 2024
1. Various of vehicles swept away by floodwater on motorway

ASSOCIATED PRESS
London – 31 October 2024
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Clair Barnes, World Weather Attribution expert:
“So we haven’t had time yet to do a full attribution study about the flooding that’s just taken place in Spain. But what we have been able to do is to look at observations of rainfall in the area. And based on the recorded rainfall, we’ve estimated that similar events have become about 12% more intense and probably about twice as likely as they would have been in a pre-industrial climate about 1.3 degrees cooler without human caused climate change.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Valencia, Spain – 31 October 2024
3. Various of cars in flooded supermarket parking
4. People leaving with food from supermarket
5. Man pulling debris from canal

ASSOCIATED PRESS
London – 31 October 2024
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Clair Barnes, World Weather Attribution expert:
“One of the things that we know with extreme rainfall, especially with these very intense short duration, extreme rainfall events that just happened in Spain, is that there is a very strong, clear physical relationship called the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, which means that for every one degree warmer that the air is, it can hold about 7% more moisture. And so because we know that the world has warmed 1.3 degrees due to fossil fuel pollution, due to human activity, we would expect rainfall like this to be almost 10% heavier than it would have been in a world without that warming influence.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Valencia, Spain – 31 October 2024
7. Various more of vehicles swept away by floodwater on motorway
8. Close of boot on the mud

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Massanassa, Valencia, Spain – 31 October 2024
9. Various of damaged vehicles piled up on train track

ASSOCIATED PRESS
London – 31 October 2024
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Clair Barnes, World Weather Attribution expert:
“I’ve heard people saying that this is the new normal. Given that we are currently on track for 2.6 degrees of warming or thereabouts within this century, we are only halfway to the new normal. And we know that events like this are going to get more extreme and more frequent as the world continues to warm. So I think what we can expect is more intense rainfall. We’ve seen that events like this one are becoming more frequent in Europe and we need to learn how to adapt to them. We need to learn how to live with these events and to live around these events to prepare better.”

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ARCHIVE – Hejin, China – 28 November 2019
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11. Aerial of coal processing plant
12. Wide of coal processing plant smokestack

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ARCHIVE: Hackberry, Louisiana – 1 April 2022
13. Various of flare burning at Venture Global LNG in Cameron

ASSOCIATED PRESS
London – 31 October 2024
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Clair Barnes, World Weather Attribution expert:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Khavda, India – 22 September 2023
15. Various drone shots of solar panels at Adani’s renewable energy project site in Khavda ++MUTE++
STORYLINE:
Human-caused climate change made Spain’s rainfall about 12% heavier and doubled the likelihood of a storm as intense as this week’s deluge of Valencia, according to a rapid but partial analysis Thursday by World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather.

Produced by Teresa de Miguel
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