Natural

The full summer heat of the last few days fades this Wednesday – just one week before the arrival of astronomical autumn – with a sharp change in weather due to a trough of cold air aloft, which will drop temperatures by up to 13 degrees in the northern half of the peninsula and bring rain to the Cantabrian region and the Pyrenees, and intense storms to the east of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands.

The central and eastern Mediterranean region is awaiting a possible cyclone this week, which could be a medicane, a Mediterranean cyclone with certain characteristics similar to those of a tropical cyclone. The phenomenon will form and affect, above all, the northern Africa area, Sicily, and Malta. Likewise, the intensity and danger of this type of weather events could worsen in the coming years due to greater energy availability from the high sea temperatures, report the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet).

Meteorologists warn of the possible formation of a medicane —hurricane in the Mediterranean— in North Africa between Malta and Sicily. Maps show the possible creation of “a cyclone with characteristics similar to those of a hurricane that forms over the Mediterranean Sea,” warn institutions such as the Institute of Geosciences (IGeo) of the CSIC-Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority released this Friday four green turtles and one loggerhead turtle after completing their recovery treatment at the National Sea Turtle Rescue Center, located in the Alexander River Nature Reserve, near the Mediterranean coast of Beit Yanai in Israel.

It doesn’t happen every day, but often enough to raise suspicion of a pattern. And it doesn’t only happen in Spain: there are records in the Azores, Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, Portugal, France, Norway… It has been occurring since 2014 and the origin is clear today but not defined. But if while walking on one of the beaches of Western Europe the reader comes across an HP brand printer cartridge, be aware that you have in your hands the relic of a shipwreck.

The Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, has proposed to the European Commission that community policies be strengthened in response to the climate crisis with a climate change adaptation fund that would include contributions of various kinds, levies on companies, and European debt instruments. This is stated in her proposal sent to the Climate Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra.

The frequency of geological disasters like the one that has happened in Nepal, causing hundreds of victims, possibly thousands, is increasing as climate changes take their toll on places as complex, and increasingly populated, as the Himalayan mountain range. The geologist and mountaineer Jerónimo López witnessed this just a year ago, when he traveled to an area near the now-collapsed one, 50 years after he participated in the first Spanish ascent of an ‘eight-thousander’, the Manaslu.

The high temperatures of the consecutive heat waves recorded in Europe this summer have caused the death of at least 35,000 more people compared to what would be expected under normal circumstances. According to provisional national figures, published by The Guardian this Tuesday, the excess mortality in Germany, France, and Spain, which are three of the largest countries in the EU, exceeds 25,000 deaths, a figure expected to increase when the total numbers for August are consolidated. Additionally, according to the Daily Mortality Monitoring System (MoMo), Spain has reached a new record, having surpassed 5,000 deaths attributed to heat this summer.

The El Niño phenomenon, which is already developing in the Pacific Ocean, could be the most intense in a century, according to a warning issued this Friday by the British Meteorological Office (Met). Strong storms and rains will hit northwest Europe, including the United Kingdom, this autumn and winter, while in the tropics, southern Africa, and northeastern Australia there will be a higher risk of drought. 2027 is already anticipated to be the warmest ever recorded, explains the Met. Meanwhile, despite the weak connection between El Niño and the climate in Spain, a very strong episode could favor wetter than normal autumns or early winters, according to Aemet.

The glaciers of planet Earth lost on average more ice in summer than they gained in winter during 2025 and for the 38th consecutive year (losing more mass than they manage to recover), according to the global climate report ‘State of the Climate in 2025’, published in the ‘Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’. The European Alps are one of the regions most affected by this phenomenon, with visible consequences already in the melting of the Mont Blanc glacier that has caused the closure of several of its shelters and its ice tunnel and has also caused rockfalls that ended the life of a French aspiring guide last Thursday, August 13.