“I can’t be in the sun, and then faint,” Richard Asom (34) tells Dagbladet. He is Norwegian and lives in a small town, Alhaurín de la Torre, outside the popular resort of Malaga in Spain.
On Saturday, the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) announced a regional heat record in Spain, with temperatures reaching 47.4 degrees in the southern city of Córdoba, according to the NTB.
This is a tenth of a degree higher than the previous record, also set in Córdoba in 2017.
Asoum, who lives two hours from Cordoba, says the temperature was between 40 and 45 degrees on Saturday and the temperature in the pool was 33 degrees.
– It’s very hot now. Without the blessing, we would not have succeeded. We sit inside a lot. Everything is going in slow motion. You cannot bear to eat a lot of food. You just drink water and then we prefer to eat a big meal late at night. Asoum says I do a little farming, so it will be my home office now mostly.
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Asoum says he has learned to live with the heat, but his dog, a Siberian husky, does not.
– She is not very enthusiastic but finds shaded places and is active late at night.
The heat is killing us
hot wave
Spain has been experiencing a heat wave since Wednesday. Temperatures in several parts of the country, including the southern regions of Andalusia and Murcia, were above 45 degrees, according to the NTB.
The heat continues this week, but not as much as it was last week, says climate researcher Hans-Olav Heijn at the Meteorological Institute in Dagbladet.
A Spanish user on Twitter posted a picture of a temperature measurement in central Granada, southern Spain, on Saturday 14 August, showing that the temperature was exactly 50 degrees in the sun. “Awesome but real. Granada, today ”, writes a Twitter user.
Climate change
Heat waves and severe droughts have caused large forest fires to erupt in many countries in southern Europe.
– What we see is that there has been a continuous series of heat waves around the Mediterranean this summer. It started with forest fires in Turkey and Greece, then came in North Africa and Tunisia, setting a heat record and then reaching Spain, says Hans-Olav Heijn.
– Why is it so hot now?
It’s a combination of coincidences and the weather. But we see that over time it is getting hotter and hotter. It’s part of the big picture of global climate change.
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