Spain’s April heat nearly impossible without climate change

By JENNIFER O’MAHONY and SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press

MADRID (AP) — Record-breaking April temperatures in Spain, Portugal and northern Africa were made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change, a new flash study found, and would have been almost impossible in the past. A group of international scientists did a rapid computer and statistical analysis of a late April heat wave that stretched across the Iberian peninsula into Algeria and Morocco. The peaks of the heat wave varied from 36.9 degrees Celsius (98.4 degrees Fahrenheit) to 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 degrees Fahrenheit) degrees in the four countries. Study lead author Sjoukje Philip of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said in a briefing a weather event of this extremity “would have been almost impossible in the past colder climate.”