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Spain has now officially gone two years without a proper cold wave during the winter. According to state weather agency Aemet's official statistics, the 2023-2024 season, together with the 2019-2020 one, was the warmest winter since 1961, directly followed by the 2024-2025 records. December 2024 and January 2025 both recorded temperatures 1C higher than normal and it is expected that the official data from this past February will be consistent with this rise - an obvious result of climate change.
What is a 'proper cold wave'? According to weather sources, a cold wave is not simply a sudden or sharp drop in temperatures. Instead, this phenomenon, which is very common between December and February, is defined by three criteria: duration, extent, and intensity. For a period of low temperatures to be considered a cold snap, the abnormally low values should: persist for at least three consecutive days; be recorded in at least 10% of stations across the country; be within 5% of the lowest temperatures recorded between January and February of the 1971-2000 period. None of these conditions have been met in Spain for two years. In comparison, there have been 10 heat waves during this period.
The last cold snap occurred between 28 February and 2 March 2023. However, the last "big cold snap" was in the winter of 2020-21, when the Filomena storm brought historic snowfall between 6 and 10 January 2021, affecting several areas of Spain and breaking all cold records, with temperatures in several regions falling below -15C and up to -25C in Molina de Aragón.
According to Aemet data, there have been 31 cold waves with a duration of 153 days so far this century. By contrast, there have been 48 heat waves lasting a total of 293 days. In other words, heat waves have been almost twice as long as cold snaps.
Aemet spokesperson Rubén del Campo stated that heat waves have been growing by about three days per decade. "Winters are warming at a rate of 0.16C per decade and summers are warming at a rate of 0.28C per decade. Although we have milder winters, the difference is more noticeable in the summers, which are increasingly hotter and take up more and more days of what should be spring and autumn," said Del Campo.
The high temperatures of the last few weeks have changed the biological rhythms of many plants, which, faced with another mild winter, have brought forward their blossoming processes, as has happened with almond trees. The low number of frosts has also contributed to the spread of pests such as the pine processionary - those endless rows of hairy caterpillars that the winter cold usually controls. The lack of cold has also affected fruit trees, which need to accumulate 'chilling hours' to emerge from dormancy and stimulate new growth. The lack of sufficient 'chilling hours' causes irregular ripening, lower yields and lower fruit quality in terms of size, colour and firmness. In addition, as Del Campo has pointed out, bringing forward flowering or ripening due to milder winters "does not mean that late frosts won't happen, which could cause more damage if biological cycles have already advanced".
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