At a time when many underestimated the existence of anthropogenic climate change or ignored it altogether, Antonio Ruiz de Elvira will tightencprofessor of applied physics at the University of Alcalá de Henares, became a pioneer of dissemination in Spain on global warming. Today, almost three decades after his first premonitory publications in some of the most important general media in the country, his articles that explain the atmospheric dynamics responsible for the catastrophe in the Valencian Community, translated into several languages, help to understand the both the causes and the solutions available to us.
What factors lead us to exclude that the DANA of October 29 in Valencia is an “old cold drop”?
Firstly, the “cold drops” traditionally take place in Spain in late October and early November. But now there are episodes of gigantic precipitation all year round. For example, there was one in the Balearic Islands at the beginning of September. And it’s not just rain and floods, we are facing more and more climatic extremes: from desperate heat to frosts in the crops of Bajo Aragón and Lérida. Of course, there have been extreme phenomena in the past, but the current phenomena are very repeated and very intense.
Furthermore, past climate changes do not allow us to anticipate the current effects on our urban planning and our energy consumption.
Indeed. The problem does not come from the effects of climate change caused by the arrangement of the planet. This is because there are so many more of us on Earth and we have to live somewhere. In Valencia, Malaga or Murcia, residents have always lived from the garden, along the boulevard and by the water. Now we can’t put our hands on our heads: we need to understand what is happening, what is going to happen and what steps we can take to fix it.
Isn’t this also the time of great hydrological contrasts, of the transition from extreme droughts to sudden floods?
Of course, but it’s not just our case. In northern Italy, the bed of the Po River, which historically irrigated crops, has dried up. In Colombia, which is one of the countries in the world where it rains the most, there are areas east of the Andes, in the Amazon and in the Orinoco, which are experiencing enormous drought, while in the west of the cordillera, in Bogotá, they suffer almost the same floods as those we experienced in Valencia.
Should we understand that territorial planning in Spain took place in a completely different climate, that the premises are no longer valid?
They say we need to build more reservoirs, but we know that when there is a flood, they overflow and break. These are ideas that come to us from the time when we had a different system of precipitation and temperatures. We cannot continue with the same playbook to build canals, roads and pipelines. We must leave hydraulic, technical and ecological dogmas behind us and look with our own eyes, not with what we have read in textbooks.
What lessons can be learned from the DANA of November 13 compared to the more destructive one of 15 days earlier?
First, raising the alarm and keeping people at home saves lives, but does not prevent destruction. And then, in Seville it can rain a lot but there are no floods because there are no mountains nearby, unlike Malaga, Valencia and even the Balearic Islands. What we traditionally call ramblas are canals that fill with water when it rains and are dry the rest of the time. And if 1,700 cubic meters per second is reached, it is an unstoppable force. What can we do? Retain water at its source when it is low, on mountain slopes. We must ensure that the soil penetrates and vegetation and forests grow. And if we can’t do that, we have to open the channels.
Open channels? What does it consist of?
The volume goes with the square of the transverse dimensions. If I have a narrow, shallow channel, a river bed 20 meters wide, expanding its surface to 100 meters is a very simple and grateful solution. The water was going down but it wasn’t coming out. And it doesn’t go against ecology either, it helps the fauna and flora.
Professor Antonio Ruiz de Elvira (Loan)
You were one of the pioneers of climate awareness. How do we feel now that we are experiencing effects that could have been avoided?
I started writing about climate change 25 years ago. I was already working on the subject, but I thought it was necessary to divulge what I knew, to say what was going to happen to us. I had to leave him because I could no longer stand the insults. I went to the ministries, I asked to stimulate photovoltaic cells, wind energy, hydrogen, and all this has started to work more or less now. But then we see that they are organizing the Climate Summit in Baku, and in front of the Palace of Congresses you can see the pumps constantly pumping oil. We are not stopping the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, and we will not do so for at least 30 years.
What are the consequences of the acceleration of global warming that we are experiencing?
CO2 in the atmosphere is warming the Arctic, causing the ice in the Siberian and Canadian tundra to melt. Two effects then occur: the emission of methane in gigantic quantities on the one hand and the absorption of heat by the planet, since the albedo effect provided by the ice by reflecting solar light is lost by 2050. global temperature will continue to rise; later, I don’t know.
How do you assess the fact that we have already failed to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C before 2030?
There is a saying in Spanish: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” This refers to the economy, but it also happens with the environment. These are non-linear phenomena, that is to say they do not progress like a straight line. They feed on each other and grow faster and faster until they break from time to time. Now the climate is increasing in energy. 25 years ago, we could have stopped it, but today, extreme phenomena are here and will continue to get worse. Heat, drought, rising sea levels… Many Spaniards who bought houses on the coast by the sea will experience this over the next 30 years. If sea levels rise, foundations are undermined and buildings eventually collapse.
Can anthropogenic global warming be unequivocally linked to the DANA of October 29 in Valencia?
An absolutely direct relationship can be established. The sea is warmer than 50 years ago. There is more water vapor over the Mediterranean, which is surrounded by the coastal range from Cape St. Vincent in Portugal to the Pyrenees, and by the Moroccan Atlas on the other side. It’s a boiler. And as the North Pole warms, the polar jet meanders and descends towards us. We saw this perfectly in the latest DANA: as it descends, it cools the vapor and transforms it into drops of liquid water. Today it happens every 20 days, but 50 years ago it didn’t happen because the Arctic was still very cold.
Are we in Spain aware that the Mediterranean is precisely one of the global epicenters of warming?
No, I don’t think we are, but because we don’t want to be. I remember that as a professor in Alcalá de Henares we gave a lecture in the Plaza de Cervantes. There were families with children, elderly people, but the young people who passed by put their heads under the tent, heard things about climate change and left scared.
What would then be the priorities in terms of adaptation and resilience after the Paiporta tragedy?
The most urgent thing is to open the canals to prevent water from escaping and invading homes. This can be a bit complicated, the houses would have to be expropriated at very reasonable prices. The second thing is to try to contain the water where it falls, on the slopes of the Coast Range. Capture it at the top and don’t let the torrents form, merge with each other and ultimately destroy everything in their path.
What do these works consist of, if they are not prey?
I am referring to structures that allow water to be distributed across the width, such as terraces, small detours and barriers that distribute it. It’s an idea, any engineer can come up with others, but it seems the most reasonable to me. It can also fill the arid lands of Spain with flora and fauna and produce forests. This would be my solution: today widen the canals, tomorrow stop the water where it falls.
