The summers in Mallorca and across the Balearics have been getting hotter and the nights more tropical and experts have said that we are going to have to get used to a more tropical climate in the islands. Climate change, caused or influenced by people, either directly or indirectly, has caused a tenfold increase in extreme heat in the period between 2010 and 2024, according to a method for calculating the risks associated with extreme events developed by the University of Graz (Austria).
The new calculation method, which is explained in an article published in Weather and Climate Extremes, can calculate all relevant risk metrics for phenomena such as heat waves, floods and droughts in any region of the world. The team, led by Gottfried Kirchengast, used this method to investigate changes in extreme heat events in Europe, and the calculations were based on datasets of daily maximum temperatures between 1961 and 2024.
The result was that total extreme heat in most regions of central and southern Europe increased approximately tenfold in the current climate period, between 2010 and 2024, compared to the period from 1961 to 1990. This is due to ‘the increase in both the frequency and duration of the phenomena, as well as the magnitude of the thresholds exceeded and their spatial extent,’ Kirchengast explained in a university statement.
This ‘enormous increase’ in the total extreme metric goes far beyond its natural variability and ‘shows the influence of human-induced climate change with a clarity that even I, as a climate researcher, had not seen before,’ he added. The threshold for considering a temperature “extreme” was set at the temperature of each location that was only exceeded in 1% of daily values between 1961 and 1990.
That threshold exceeds 35 degrees in southern Spain, is around 30 degrees in Austria and around 25 degrees in Finland.
The study also provides a basis for better quantifying the damage caused to people, ecosystems and infrastructure. Whether in the field of health, construction, agriculture, forestry or the energy sector, many areas are affected by the impacts and damage caused by extreme weather and climate events.
Temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius cause heat stress on the body and weaken the physical condition of many people, the note recalls.
This method can be used to calculate the frequency, duration, intensity, spatial extent and other variables of extreme events, up to the combination of all metrics in the total extremity.
The ability to calculate the severity of these hazards is, for example, crucial for climate impact calculations and corresponding adaptation measures.
If adequate long-term climate data is available, the development of climate risk metrics for extremes of interest can be tracked year after year and decade after decade, both in European countries and in any other region of the world, the researcher said. The method can serve a wide variety of purposes, from providing comprehensive data on the hazards of extreme weather events for climate impact analyses to supporting the attribution of responsibility for increased climate damage and risks to actors that generate large emissions, such as states or companies.