June 2025 has all the ballot papers to be the most popular in Spain, because we have reliable data, even though we have not registered until the moment – no heat wave.
But the effect of this on health already shows: the daily mortality monitoring system (MOMO) calculates that all that 75 dead are attributed to surplus temperatures.
This tool of the National Center for Epidemiology (belonging to the Carlos III Health Institute) is of crucial importance in the development of the ‘National Plan for preventive actions of the effects of excess temperature on health’, which is worked out annually by the Ministry of Health.
Momo data arrives until 19 June. In the ten years that has followed surplus daily mortality, only two amounts only 2025 in the number of deaths.
In 2017, a heat wave Spain destroyed between 13 and 21 June: there were 30 affected provinces, with an average anomaly of 2.6 ⁰ ⁰ ⁰ ette ⁰ bed determ ette determ ette. From day 1 to 19 of that month, Momo estimated 360.
At the time, June 2017 defeated all temperature records and was considered the hottest in history.
Although June 2022 did not exceed that brand, it still lived a wave of intense heat, between 12 and 18, with 39 affected provinces, an anomaly of 3.2 ⁰c and a maximum temperature of 37.7 orationc.
According to Momo, according to Momo, this earlier wave, of greater expansion and intensity, left 476 deaths in the first 19 days of the month.
The 75 dead estimated by the tool, however, are much superior, but in the rest of the years counted by the system, which started in 2015: between 13 of 2020 and 37 of 2023.
To explain a heat wave, the State Meteorology Agency notes that the Orange must be activated in at least 10% of the national territory for at least three consecutive days.
The episode of Hitte lived this week through the peninsula – and that is expected to be continued as the following – has not been generalized but has already left historic maxima in municipalities of Córdoba, Sevilla and Badajoz, where the 40 ⁰ ⁰c has been exceeded.
The responsible person is a dorsal of high pressure on the peninsula that will continue until the end of the month. Meteorologists believe that it will maintain exceptionally high temperatures, between 5 and 10 ° C above usual, until the end of the month.
A Dana in the Atlantic ‘Subject’ is dorsal in the West, but will also make a certain lighting of temperatures with rains in some parts of the northwest possible.
However, the heat that will be maintained in a large part of the country in the coming days will probably increase the number of deaths due to high temperatures.
“The first heat waves have greater risks, which is explained by the lack of acclimatization, but also because of the vulnerability of certain population groups (the elderly).”
This warns Dominic RoyéResearcher of the bioloxic mission of Galicia (MBC-CSIC) and expert in the relationship between climate and health.
“For climate change, June is increasingly an extension of the central summer, which we see at temperatures that occur more often in the coming months.”
He used to, June “, was a month of transition: warmth begins to impose yourself, but it still does not reach the extreme intensity of July and August, and the same applies until September.”
But it seems that it is a thing of the past.
Beyond the heat block
What do we understand under a death that is due to high temperatures? Heat is not a concept that appears in death certificates, even when it comes to a heat stroke.
The latter occurs when the body temperature rises above 40 ºC, manifests itself through symptoms such as dizziness, confusion, headache or tachycardia and can lead to a multi -organ failure.
However, heat card represents only about 0.2% of all deaths that are due to heat. This concept mainly refers to chronic conditions that have worsened high temperatures.
It is the respiratory agents – such as chronic obstructive lung disease – or cardiovascular that make up the majority of these exacerbations, with degenerative also known.
Thus, the estimation systems of heat testing indirectly calculate these deaths: observing excess deaths with regard to what was observed in previous years and crossing with the episodes of temperatures above a threshold.
This threshold is normally in 95% of the highest temperatures that have been registered in the previous five years.
The data is shared by the province (because heat is not the same in Spain) and age, because the population is the most vulnerable to heat that is older than 75: in 2023, for example, they concentrated 90.5% of the deaths that are due to surplus heat.
The thing, with everything, is not that simple. That year Momo estimated 2,955 deaths that could be attributed to surplus temperature during the summer. An article published in Nature Medicine Last year he raised the calculation to 8,532 dead.
“We use the most common methodology in scientific studies,” he explained Marcos QuijalResearcher of the Global Health Institute of Barcelona (Isglobal) and one of the work authors.
It refers to the most modern models “take into account the non -linear dependence between temperature and mortality and its delayed effect.”
If we put the temperature and heating in two axes, the result would not be a diagonal line, but rather a line that has been bent.
Moreover, the effect of temperatures is not immediately. It can spend a week from the end of the heat wave and the death of a person because of the decompensation that he produced.
Many researchers therefore believe that Momo figures underestimate the reality of heat in Spain and presented more sleek models.
From there, for example, the MACE Model (Mortality attributed in warmth by heat in Spain), developed by two CSIC researchers, Aurelio Tobías and Dominic Royé, and together with a scientist from the University of Valencia, Carmen íñiguez.
This system uses the MOMO data and the Spanish Meteorology Office (AEMET), but performs the analysis “given the delayed effects of a maximum of one week before temperature.”
The results contrast strongly with that of Momo. According to the MACE model, The “moderate” heat is said to have reached the death from 1,486 to 16 JuneWhile 4 people would have died because of ‘extreme heat’.
“The risk due to high temperatures is disabled,” he explains to this newspaper Royé That he has also worked out different predictions about the effect of global warming.
“Spain is especially vulnerable to climate change because of its geographical situation, his aging and his socio -economic conditions,” he says.
Traditionally, the cold kills more than heat. It is not necessary to go to the worst scenarios that Royé described in his work to check whether we are not far from the situation.
