The Guardian's view of climate-related disasters: Spain's tragedy will not be the last | editorial

TThe death toll from floods in Spain's Valencia region has exceeded 200. Major clean-up operations are underway in desperate conditions and severe weather warnings remain in force. The storms that caused this devastation—roads turned into muddy rivers, thousands of homes were flooded, and cars were swept into piles—were unprecedented. The Gotta friaor “Cold Drop”, occurs regularly when cold autumn air flows over the warm Mediterranean, causing dense clouds to form. But according to the Spanish weather service, this rain was ten times heavier than a normal downpour.

Extreme weather conditions in Spain and the rest of southern Europe usually mean dangerous heat, drought and forest fires. The regional government is under attack for inadequate warnings and there is no doubt that the severity of these floods came as a terrible shock.

But in another sense, the events of the past week are part of a pattern. While the destruction is unprecedented, climate scientists' analyzes are familiar. Peer-reviewed attribution studies that 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 suggested rising temperatures made flooding twice as likely this week. Another scientist, Stefano Materia, said the reduced absorbency of parched soil means droughts and floods should be viewed as two sides of the same coin. Like Hurricane Helene, which wreaked havoc in the southeastern United States in September, killing more than 220 people, and Storm Boris, which caused severe flooding in central Europe, the flooding in Spain is evidence of the devastation wrought by climate instability has.

This week also brought some more hopeful news. Thanks to the boom in renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions in the EU fell by 8% in 2023, 37% below 1990 levels. But the worrying lack of progress at the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia, as well as warnings about the likely impact of a Trump Victory at global environmental negotiations means expectations are not high for this month's climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. The fact that the host country wants to expand gas production while energy giants Shell and BP both scale back green investments suggests a political climate of renewed rejection.

The Cop biodiversity process, which runs parallel to the Cop climate negotiations, has never achieved 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 in Montreal two years ago, most countries do not even have an action plan to set alongside their emissions targets. Much of the debate in Colombia has focused on financing poorer countries and the role of government subsidies for polluting industries.

In Spain, a large majority of the public recognizes the threat of climate change and supports measures to combat it. There, as in much of the world, catastrophic weather events that were once considered “natural disasters” are now rightly viewed as climate disasters. Policies that help people and places adapt to increased risks are urgently needed. This includes clear and timely warnings and remediation plans. But the biggest policy challenge remains reducing the threat of dangerous weather conditions like those that hit eastern, southern and central Spain this week.

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