Since January 16, nine storms have hit Spain, Portugal, and northern Morocco. Wind and rain caused damage and flooding. World Weather Attribution, an international team of scientists, investigated how exceptional this was and what role climate change plays.
Victims, Flooding, and Damage
In Spain, more than 12,400 people have been evacuated in recent weeks due to flooding and infrastructure damage caused by strong winds. In Portugal, six people died during Storm Kristin, with winds up to 202 km/h leaving one million people without power and widespread damage to buildings. In northern Morocco, floods claimed 43 lives, displaced 300,000 people, and flooded 110,000 homes.
Consecutive Storms
The nine storms named since January 16 are listed in Table 1. Storm Pedro is the sixteenth named storm in the entire winter season, which began in September. The record is 17, so it is not unlikely that the maximum for the 2025-2026 season, ending in April, will be exceeded. What is especially exceptional is the succession of so many storms passing over the same region. The animation in Figure 1 shows the passing storms with associated rain areas.
| Storm | Naming Date |
|---|---|
| Harry | January 16 |
| Ingrid | January 20 |
| Joseph | January 25 |
| Kristin | January 27 |
| Leonardo | February 2 |
| Marta | February 5 |
| Nils | February 10 |
| Oriana | February 11 |
| Pedro | February 17 |
Figure 1. Animation of wind at 5-6 kilometers altitude and precipitation amount from January 12 to February 2, 2026. The wind blows along the contour lines, stronger where the lines are closer together. 00a9KNMI/ERA5
Role of Climate Change
To better understand the role of climate change, we looked at two areas (see Figure 2): northern Portugal and southwestern Spain together with northern Morocco.
The recent floods were not caused by a single extreme downpour, but by a series of heavy storms in succession. However, we specifically looked at the days with the heaviest precipitation between October and March, as these cause the most damage.
Measurements show that in both regions the heaviest precipitation has clearly increased. Compared to a climate about 1.300b0C cooler than now:
- extreme precipitation in the southern region has become about 29% heavier
- in the northern region this is even about 36% heavier
These are clear and substantial changes.
We also looked at climate models to see if they can reproduce this increase well. That proves difficult. In the northern region, the models show only an increase of about 6%. In the southern region, the models show no clear trend. This means that observations show much stronger changes than the models predict.
The conclusion is therefore twofold:
- It is clear that climate change has intensified heavy precipitation.
- But it is difficult to say exactly how much of this is directly due to climate change, because the models do not sufficiently replicate the observed trend.
Proactive Measures Limit Damage
In all three countries, warnings were issued in time. This allowed authorities to intervene quickly and take targeted measures to reduce risks. People were evacuated in time, significantly reducing the number of casualties.
Every loss of life is one too many. But thanks to early warnings and the decisive actions of emergency services, a much greater disaster was averted.