Catalonia's global warming has skyrocketed: temperatures have already risen by 2°C in the last 75 years.

BarcelonaThe average annual temperature continues to rise dangerously, with an accumulated increase of 2°C over the last 75 years in Catalonia. The rate of warming is clearly greater than that of the planet as a whole, which is currently estimated to be just over one degree over the same period. This confirms that the Mediterranean region is one of the areas warming the most in the world, according to the latest Annual Bulletin of Climate Indicators (BAIC) from the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (SMC), published this Friday.

The data also confirm that 2024 was the third warmest year on record in our country, with an annual temperature 2.2°C above the reference average (1961-1990), only behind 2022 and 2023. Therefore, the last three years have been among the last three °C years on average, something that the SMC considers "unprecedented." And we will see how it behaves in 2025, given that the summer heat has already arrived much earlier than usual and with some records.

Since 1950, the average annual temperature in Catalonia is estimated to have risen by 0.27°C per decade. Summer is by far the season in which the rate of warming is most pronounced, specifically with increases of 0.38°C per decade. The data also show that there are increasingly more tropical nights on the coast and during the off-season, with minimum temperatures above 20°C in autumn being particularly noticeable. Winters are also milder, with the 2023-2024 winter being the warmest on record in our country.

The report also notes a lengthening of intense heat episodes and days with summer temperatures, while climate indices related to cold temperatures continue to decline, particularly in terms of the number and duration of intense cold episodes or frost.

The good news: the end of the drought

The warmest years recorded so far in Catalonia have also coincided with the long period of historic drought This spring is now definitively over. In this sense, the SMC report highlights that 2024 broke the dry trend that began at the end of 2021, and overall it was a year with normal or above-average rainfall. It is estimated that last year it rained 8.9% more than the reference period (1961-1990).

The exceptional rainfall this past spring has been the final straw for the drought. A wet period that has allowed a slow recovery of vegetation, although it is estimated that 28% of the trees have died during the three and a half years of drought.

The report also confirms a 2% decrease in precipitation every decade since 1950, especially during the summer and winter. An increase of 35 hours of sunshine per decade has also been detected since the 1950s, and a decrease of two days per decade of completely cloudy skies. These factors are also contributing to rising temperatures, and this is causing an accelerated change in the Mediterranean climate, which is becoming increasingly arid.

An increasingly warmer sea

The SMC study also highlights the constant warming of our coasts over the past fifty-one years. The average annual seawater temperature in the first 50 meters of depth at this point on the Catalan coast during the year 2024 was among the two or three highest since the beginning of the series, being the highest recorded so far, with an average value of 3.1 centimeters per decade since 1990, the year in which this type of data series began. This value represents a sea level rise of approximately 11 centimeters over the last 35 years.