The Spanish weather institute AEMET has issued both orange and red warnings in several Spanish regions on Sunday. One of them is the already badly affected Valencia region, where up to 100 millimeters of rain may fall in the coming 24 hours.
– The warm water in the Mediterranean Sea is an important factor that contributed to the rains in Spain being so heavy, says Marcus Sjöstedt.
Sweeping over the Azores
The rain has continued to fall over Spain and the situation may worsen significantly in the next few days. The reason is the subtropical storm that is now moving over the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores.
It is expected to make landfall over the Iberian Peninsula off Portugal but is forecast to reach deep into Spain with heavy downpours.
– We can expect the rain to move in over south-west Portugal during Monday morning, he says.
The risk of downpours and possible flooding in almost the entire province is extreme, according to Aemet, which advises people not to venture out unless absolutely necessary.
Hot sea temperature makes room for storm
Even in the Pacific Ocean, there have been unusually good conditions for storms to form. And East Asian countries have repeatedly been hit by hurricanes.
– In this part of the world, we usually see the hurricane during the high season between the first of July and the end of September, says Marcus Sjöstedt and continues:
– Now there have been two strong hurricanes in October and a new one is forming and it is the warm surface water that is the fuel for these systems.
As the surface temperature of the oceans rises, the weather systems also become more extreme.
– We have global warming, the temperature is rising – even in the oceans. It has a major impact on our storms, which risk becoming more extreme.