This week, the ninth storm of the winter is going to hit the Balearics, although the impact will not be as extreme as the belt of storms has had on mainland, with heavy snow isolating parts of the north and severe flooding causing billions of euros worth of flood and wind damage to the south. The impact of these events is being felt not only in individual cities but across the country. Economic losses, disruptions in transportation, and risks to infrastructure are being discussed at all levels.
Authorities are having to rethink their water management and emergency response plans for natural disasters and the Prime Minister has called for a national plan to de drawn up. The scale of destruction caused by the series of storms has affected not only residential buildings but also key infrastructure facilities. Road closures and damaged bridges have complicated evacuation efforts and the delivery of humanitarian aid. In some areas, power outages have occurred, and restoration work is proceeding intermittently due to ongoing rainfall. In recent years, Spain has increasingly faced extreme weather events that lead to destruction and forced relocations.
Economic losses
In 2023 and 2024, similar downpours and floods caused serious damage to regions in the south of the country. At that time, transport disruptions, widespread power outages, and significant economic losses were also recorded. Each new episode intensifies the debate over the need to revise national strategies for combating the effects of climate change and strengthening early warning systems.
This begs the question everyone is asking, what is happening to the weather? Romualdo Romero has some answers.
He is the Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). After completing his PhD in Physics in 1998, he trained as a specialist in Mediterranean meteorology and climate. He carried out postdoctoral research at NOAA/NSSL (USA) and held shorter research stays at MIT, the University of Wales, and Politecnico di Milano, before continuing his career at UIB, where he became full professor at the age of 41.
Expert in the Mediterranean
His teaching spans undergraduate and postgraduate levels, covering subjects such as geophysical fluid dynamics, numerical simulation, and climate change. He has supervised several doctoral theses and has been invited to lecture at universities and scientific meetings worldwide. Prof. Romero’s research focuses on Mediterranean meteorology, severe weather events, climate change, and numerical modelling. He has led more than 20 national and European projects, published extensively in top international journals, and contributed to major international networks such as MEDEX and HYMEX.
His contributions have earned him multiple national research distinctions and international awards, including the prestigious Plinius Medal of the European Geosciences Union. He is also a founding member of the spin-off company MeteoClim Services. He explained to the Bulletin this week that while climate change is clearly a key factor, it is a much more complex matter. “What we have been seeing in the south of Spain, for example, over the past few months is due to a number of factors.
“Firstly these weather fronts are more common in northern Europe - the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Germany, for example - but this year, they have come further south. While it has not been adversely wet in Mallorca and the Balearics, it has in Andalusia where some 2,000 ml of rain has fallen so far. In the Tramuntana we’re talking about 300. But what these weather fronts have brought to Mallorca is very strong winds.
Increasingly violent
“These weather fronts from the eastern board of the United States and the Caribbean are now becoming increasingly violent and that is mainly due to rising sea temperatures. Sea temperatures have been gradually rising by 1 to 2ºC. It may not seem much but we’re seeing the impact. What this means is that as these weather fronts move across the Atlantic, they pick up more humidity so when they make landfall, they unleash much more rain. However, predicting rainfall patterns is much more complex than heat,” he explained.
“The climate simulation models point to a clearly more adverse future in the Mediterranean area. The western Mediterranean, and specifically the Balearics, is a hotspot for climate change. Everything points to a future decrease in average rainfall and a clear increase in temperatures, especially in the hottest part of the year. This situation tends to exacerbate the climate, which is already semi-arid by nature.
“Yes, we will continue to have rain in the Balearics, but we are looking at shorter periods but more intense, hence problems with flooding, transport and agriculture. And, as we’ve been experiencing, stronger winds. But every season is different and that is what makes my field of work and investigation so exciting, it’s far from boring.
“At the moment we’re all talking about the wet and harsh winter but soon we’ll all be talking about the hot summer. Like I said, it’s seasonal and will continue to be so. Here in the Balearics we’ve seen the end of spring and summer become much hotter, heatwaves are more common as are tropical nights and the latter is something we’re going to have to get used to. The Balearics are going to become more tropical.
“Being surrounded by sea, that does help to ease conditions in coastal areas, but the interior of Mallorca, for example, is becoming increasingly arid and hot during the summer. The cooling coastal breeze is no longer reaching the centre of the island and that is partly down to rising sea temperatures.
“The atmosphere will continue to warm up, and this is one of the problems that people find difficult to understand. We cannot wait and act politically and economically when we see that the effects are very adverse and then reduce emissions to stabilise the climate. The climate has a lot of inertia and warming will continue. It would be possible to stabilise it in centuries, but not in decades. What we are talking about now is taking action so that by the middle of the century we have not increased the temperature by more than 1.5 degrees.
Nowhere is getting cooler
“We cannot reverse or stop the impact of climate change and global warming, but what we can do and must do is try and ease it, slow it down. We have to prevent global temperatures rising by 3ºC.
“Greenhouse gases are very stable and will remain there for a long time. The oceans have an enormous capacity to absorb heat, as does the ice; both are slow to respond. The sea releases heat very slowly and will take decades or centuries to cool down. Much of the damage has already been done, and now it is just a matter of not reaching extreme limits with irreversible consequences. And this is where action must be taken, to avoid emitting more than we already do.
“In fact, there is nowhere on the planet where temperatures are falling and that is one of the key problems,” he said. “Uneven warming is occurring worldwide, greater in the northern hemisphere and at higher latitudes. The Mediterranean is an area with a temperature increase above the global average: in the last 30 years it has risen by almost two degrees, and aridification of this region is expected,” Romualdo said. “The signs of climate change are obvious, the warning signs are clear, we’re seeing longer droughts in southern Europe, concerns over water resources are mounting, even here in the Balearics.
Lifestyle impact
“Traditionally, December and January in Mallorca were dry and mild months. We always used to get an anti-cyclone during this period, not any more. And when you look at Europe in general, we are getting more weather bombs, explosive fronts which are either very cold, wet and windy or unusually hot, dry and arid; these phenomena will become more frequent,” the professor explained.
“Human lives are obviously profoundly affected by environmental degradation, such as air pollution and climate change, which cause health issues, food insecurity, and forced displacement. Looking at southern Spain, winter has always been the wet season but not like what we’ve been witnessing over the past few months, and these extreme weather fronts cause multiple and serious problems.
“So we have to decide on our future energy production and consumption. Do we continue using fossil fuels or do we make a bigger push for renewables? Like I said, it’s impossible to calm the changing weather and climate down, but we can work towards easing it,” he stressed.