02/26/2026, 08:1102/26/2026, 08:11
According to recent calculations, climate change played a major role in the devastating rainfall in Spain and Portugal. According to researchers, the days with the heaviest rainfall have become a third wetter than without climate change.
This trend is evident at the current level of global warming of around 1.3 degrees compared to pre-industrial times, according to an analysis by the scientific initiative World Weather Attribution. The international research team comes to this conclusion after studying the exceptionally strong storms and rainfall that caused widespread destruction in Spain, Portugal and northern Morocco in January and February.
Result for the respective days with the heaviest rainfall: In the southern part of the region examined, the intensity of rainfall increased by 36 percent and in the northern region by 29 percent.
A year’s worth of rain in just a few days
In Grazalema (southern Spain), more rain fell in just a few days than normally falls in an entire year. Parts of Morocco and Portugal experienced rainfall during a storm that statistically only occurs once a century. According to the study, the storms killed around 50 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and caused enormous damage.
It can be reliably proven that climate change is making heavy rainfall even more extreme, explains German climate researcher Friederike Otto from Imperial College London. “This is exactly how climate change shows itself: weather conditions that were previously manageable are turning into dangerous catastrophes.” We have the knowledge and tools to stop this worsening trend – but this needs to happen much faster.
Otto is one of the most important scientists in attribution research – also known as attribution research. This examines what contribution climate change has to extreme weather events. The scientists analyze how likely and how severe the events would have been without human-caused warming since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. (sda/dpa)