Governments will meet in Antalya, Turkey, from November 9 to 20, 2026, for the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31), to discuss the progress made and agree on new measures against climate change. What should Catalonia and Spain advocate for at COP31? Adaptation to climate change. Adaptation consists of preparing for climate risks and reducing their impacts, for example, by protecting our coasts, improving infrastructure, and protecting people from extreme heat and droughts.

After the severe drought of 2023, it seemed that the countryside was starting to breathe again regarding agricultural damage resulting from the climate and extreme weather phenomena. In 2024, the damage rate across the country decreased, but it has rebounded again in 2025 with hailstorms as the main factor.

The rain and wind storm that has battered Catalonia this weekend has left spectacular images of flooding, tens of thousands of people affected to one degree or another, and a provisional toll of two dead and one missing. In the coming days, it will be necessary to refine the damage assessment and the management of the emergency, but from the outset, two things can already be stated. The ES-Alert warnings may be annoying at times, but this time they have proven their usefulness. Seeing the magnitude of the flows coming down streams and ravines, it is not difficult to think that without a generalized warning there would have been more victims. The citizenry, in general terms, has already learned to heed the recommendations and acts accordingly.

Sea level rise is one of the impacts of the climate crisis that are already irreversible, as the UN warns. As the oceans warm, water rises mainly due to a phenomenon of thermal expansion, and to this is added the water poured in by both melting terrestrial glaciers and the continental ice of the poles as it thaws. It is precisely this last cause, the melting of the polar ice caps, that has been accelerating the most in recent years. Now, a new study published in Scientific Data, from the Nature group, offers the most precise portrait obtained to date on ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

Extreme temperatures have long since ceased to be an exception and have become a recurring threat to health. Now the arrival of a super-El Niño could exacerbate this trend and cause 451,000 additional heat-related deaths worldwide over the next six months, according to an estimate by the Climate Impact Lab, a research group linked to the University of Chicago.

At the desert border between Mexico and Texas, animal smuggling has ceased to be just a livestock offense to become a large-scale threat. The illegal sale of horses, without veterinary controls or quarantines, has opened a gap for the New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax). This carnivorous parasite, which devours the live flesh of animals, puts the livestock economy of the entire geographic area at risk. In this photo essay, we propose a graphic journey between the immensity of the Rio Grande and the routes controlled by Mexican cartels, the lack of inspections turns each clandestine convoy into a dangerous Trojan horse.

Born in Tarragona in 1969, Enric Aguilar Anfrons has been linked to the Rovira i Virgili University since its creation. He is a climatologist by profession and has held a doctorate since 2000, with a thesis that studied climate change in Antarctica. A large part of his career has been linked to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency for weather, water, and climate. Aguilar is the director of the University Institute for Research on Sustainability, Climate Change and Energy Transition (IU-RESCAT).

The world knew that the next El Niño would be powerful, but this Thursday, forecasts confirmed that this climatic phenomenon will be of great intensity and will have unpredictable consequences. The UN warns that the peak of this episode will be experienced at the end of 2026, but that it will extend until 2027, a year that could become the warmest recorded to date.

You must have slept badly tonight because of the heat, and surely you can no longer stand living with a sweaty back. And when you see how the temperature line on the TV3 weather forecast climbs for this weekend, you could start crying. And in case you had any doubt, the shaky and sad voice of Meteocat had to tell us: Catalonia has experienced the hottest summer in its entire recorded history.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the international order born out of World War II seems to be in its terminal phase. The symptoms are clearly visible: wars that drag on, borders as spaces of conflict, a new arms race, protectionism, trade wars, disinformation, electoral interference, a crisis of liberal democracies, and a growing inability of international institutions to impose rules.

Every summer, as the ice recedes on the high mountain passes of the Himalayas, thousands of faithful from all over the world embark on the most extreme and spiritual pilgrimage on the planet: the route to Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar, in Tibet. Revered as the center of the world by Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and the Bön religion, the journey requires overcoming altitudes above 5,000 meters in an unparalleled test of devotion. This year, the peak season of August and September has been shaken by tragedy. A violent flood in northern Nepal, in the Rasuwa district – the gateway to the Tibetan border – has devastated bridges and roads and has so far claimed 250 lives and left over 1,500 missing,' highlighting the extreme risks of a journey that, for many believers, represents the ultimate spiritual experience.

Eight months pregnant, Mar Reguant (Súria, Bages, 1984) took her bicycle to buy her first electric car. She already had a daughter, lived on the outskirts of Chicago, and got around by pedaling alone, but she was soon to be a mother for the second time, and a big snowfall was predicted. “The car was very small and had a maximum range of 100 kilometers,” she recalls. When she returned from the United States after the pandemic, she moved to a development in Bellaterra with her two young children. And unlike her neighbors, for a year and a half she also lived without a car. “Now I think about it and I don't know how we did it – she explains, laughing –. The children were very young and it shows that it can be done, but sometimes activism weighs us down a bit.”

This Friday will see the peak of the umpteenth heatwave of the summer, with suffocating temperatures that unfortunately we will have to get used to, as they are on their way to becoming a new normal. Tropical nights – above 25 degrees –, which were once exceptional, are now common in many Mediterranean cities, and are beginning to be felt strongly in Northern Europe, where until now they were unimaginable. In this context, the data contained in the Atlas of heat vulnerability are particularly interesting, a study that calculates the needs of the main Spanish cities in a scenario of rising temperatures. The study identifies variables such as the quality of the housing stock, per capita income, or urban planning and vegetation to mark the difference between cities that are better prepared to cope with heatwaves and others that are more exposed to their risks.

This summer has already left a series of human tragedies and on the landscape that invite us to think about the material conditions of our time. Thermodynamic and geological phenomena – such as high temperatures that force us to re-adapt to the environment, or the spiral of fires across the sub-European territory – and social dramas such as the massive flows of migrants arriving from Africa – and xenophobic reactions, this summer in Ceuta, last summer in Torre Pacheco – overlap in space and time. It is the time of heat and scarcity of the Earth.

Heat waves are becoming increasingly common, and beyond meteorological alerts, these mercury spikes also test the capacity of our cities. "We are building buildings for a climate that no longer exists," asserts Pablo Martínez, architect and founder of the think tank Trescientosmil. He is one of the authors of the'Atlas of Heat Vulnerability, developed together with the earth sciences department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - National Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS). This is a visual tool that collects up to 70 climate simulations to map out which cities in Spain will suffer more heat waves in the future, which will need more cooling measures, and which are less prepared to face them by 2050.

While Europe is getting down to business with legislation that tightens the noose on plastics, the Government is processing the draft Catalan waste law, which is to replace the law from 1993. In fact, its drafting has been years in the making – it began to be drafted in 2018 – and, along the way, some of the flagship measures that had been planned have disappeared or have gone from being obligations to voluntary or promotional measures, such as the obligation to provide fiscal bonuses to citizens who carry out good selective collection. On the other hand, ambitious points for 2030 are incorporated, such as the obligation for municipalities to implement efficient collection systems or the prohibition of single-use cups at festive, cultural or sporting events. According to sources from the Department of Territory, the changes are due to the European and state context: they argue that it has changed "significantly" and that many measures from the 2022 text are now mandatory, such as the deposit, return and refund system (SDDR).

A new era is beginning regarding packaging and its waste. As of this Wednesday, European Union member states must apply the new packaging and packaging waste regulation, in effect since last year. The text regulates the sustainability and labeling of packaging throughout its life cycle and introduces restrictions on the production, use, and waste management with a view to 2050. However, some of the measures will not be enforceable until 2028, 2030, or even later.

This July, ocean surface temperatures have surpassed 20.96 °C, the highest value since records began for this month. This is the conclusion of the Copernicus climate change service, managed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Values were particularly high along much of the Atlantic coast and in the Western Mediterranean, and have been partly associated with the increase in marine heatwaves. marine heatwaves.

Surely many of you, upon arriving at the beach, have commented with your surroundings on the high temperature of the sea this year. Well yes, it's not just a feeling: a large part of the Mediterranean, and specifically its western sector, is experiencing an intense marine heatwave since the end of May.

This summer doesn't smell of the sea. It smells of ash, of loss, of destruction. Ask the thousands of people displaced from their homes or those who have lost everything, even a family member. And they are right: it is not climate change. The unbearable temperatures, the deaths from the heatwave, and the thousands of hectares scorched are not the result of climate change. It is us. We have already changed the climate and now we are living in full emergency.