The Guardian’s view on climate-related disasters: Spain’s tragedy will not be the last | Editorial

TThe death toll from flooding in the Valencia region of Spain has reached 200. A huge clean-up is underway in desperate conditions, with severe weather warnings still in place. The storms that caused this devastation – with roads turned into rivers of mud, thousands of homes flooded and cars swept away in piles – were unprecedented. The get fríaor “cold drop”, is a regular occurrence when cold autumn air moves over the warm Mediterranean and causes dense clouds to form. But this rain, according to the Spanish weather service, was 10 times stronger than a normal downpour.

Extreme weather in Spain and the rest of Southern Europe is more commonly understood as dangerous heat, drought and forest fires. The regional government is under attack for the lack of adequate warnings and there is no doubt that the severity of these floods came as a terrible shock.

But in another way, the events of the past week are part of a pattern. Although the destruction is unprecedented, the analysis of climate scientists is well known. Peer-reviewed attribution studies — which use computer models to determine the impact of global warming on specific events — take time to produce. But the head of the World Weather Attribution Project said initial calculations suggest rising temperatures caused this week’s flooding twice as likely. Another scientist, Stefano Materia, said that the reduced absorptive capacity of parched soil means that drought and flooding must be seen as two sides of the same coin. Like Hurricane Helene, which wreaked havoc and killed more than 220 people in the southeastern United States in September, and Storm Boris, which led to severe flooding across central Europe, Spain’s deluge is testament to the havoc wreaked by climate instability.

This week also brought some more hopeful news. Greenhouse gas emissions in the EU fell by 8% by 2023, bringing them to 37% below 1990 levels, thanks to the renewable energy boom. But the worrying lack of progress at the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia, combined with warnings about the likely impact on global environmental talks of a Trump victory, means expectations for this month’s climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, are not high. The fact that the host country is set to expand gas production, while energy giants Shell and BP are both scaling back green investment, points to a political climate of resurgent denial.

The Cop biodiversity process, which runs parallel to the Cop climate negotiations, has never gained the same momentum, despite the vital importance of protecting nature – including forests and oceans – and the way this is linked to the climate threat. Despite the framework agreed two years ago in Montreal, most countries do not even have an action plan to be drawn up alongside their emissions targets. Much of the argument in Colombia has focused on funding for poorer countries and the role of government support for environmentally damaging industries.

In Spain, a large majority of the public recognizes the threat of climate change and favor policies to address it. There, as in much of the world, catastrophic weather events that used to be considered “natural disasters” are now rightly viewed instead as climate disasters. There is an urgent need for policies that support people and places to adapt to increased risks. Clear and timely warnings and recovery plans are part of this. But reducing the threat of dangerous weather, such as that which hit eastern, southern and central Spain this week, remains the biggest political challenge.

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