Mallorca is getting hotter as heat waves become more frequent

The current heat wave is the longest on record

Cooling down from the heat in Palma, Mallorca

Cooling down in Palma. | Pere Bota

Andrew EdePalma21/07/2022 07:36

The current heat wave in Mallorca is the longest on record. The Aemet met agency suggests that the final day will be this coming Sunday, but spokesperson Miquel Gili is not ruling out the possibility of a further heat wave this summer - late July and early August are when they are most likely to occur.

To qualify as a heat wave, temperatures of 36C and above must be recorded by a certain number of weather stations for three consecutive days. Although Mallorca is at present experiencing the second heat wave of the year, the maximum has not exceeded 40C. The highest temperature has so far been 39.7 - this was at the Porreres weather station in June. The all-time high in Mallorca is 44.2; this was in Muro in July 1994.

Periods of extreme temperatures are expected to become more frequent as a result of climate change. In Mallorca, there was just one heat wave in the 1990s. Despite the Muro record, that heat wave was from August 5 to 7 in 1993. Between 2000 and 2009, there were four heat waves. Two of these were in 2003 - June 21 to 24 and August 10 to 14. The other two were over three-day periods in July 2006 and July 2009.

Between 2010 and 2019 there were seven heat waves in Mallorca. Gili points out that since 2017 there have been heat waves every summer, and in 2021 there were - like this year - two heat waves.