A study by the Universitat Politència de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona concludes that Spain “could change from a Mediterranean climate to a steppe climate” as a result of climate change, the university said in a statement today. The study ‘Spain: towards a drier and warmer climate’, presented at the International Congress of Meteorology of the European Meteorological Society (EMS) in Barcelona, analyses the evolution of temperatures and precipitation from 1971 to 2022 throughout Spain and makes a projection of the mainland-Balearic climate until 2050.
Researchers from the UPC’s Centre for Land Policy and Valuation (CPSV) address the problem of structural climate change, explaining the relationship between the process of global warming, which affects the mainland and the Balearics in particular, and the parallel process towards a drier climate.
The research predicts that, if the warming trend experienced in recent years continues, by 2050 there will be a reduction in rainfall of between 14% and 20% compared to current precipitation. For this reason, it warns that global warming would cause a “very marked” change in the Spanish climate by 2050, from a typical Mediterranean climate to one that is drier and warmer, steppe-like and even desert-like. In the case of Barcelona, the research predicts that it will change from a climate of mild, dry winters and hot summers to a steppe and semi-arid climate.
