Drought-stricken Spain says last month was the hottest and driest April since records began in 1961.
Rainfall was sparse, being only a fifth of what would normally be seen for the month, making April the driest month on record. Three years of scant rainfall and high temperatures put the country officially into long-term drought earlier this year, according to the Associated Press.
The State Meteorological Agency, known by the Spanish acronym AEMET, said Monday that the average daily temperature in April was 14.9 degrees Celsius (58.8 Fahrenheit), which is 3 degrees Celsius above the average.
The Washington Post is reporting that a flash study by a group of international scientists last week found that record-breaking April temperatures in Spain, Portugal, and northern Africa were made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change and would have been almost impossible in the past.
The government has requested emergency funds from the European Union to support farmers and ranchers whose crops are being affected by the situation.
Agriculture Minister Luis Planas wrote to the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, pleading for aid for Spain’s 890,000 farm workers, including from the bloc’s agricultural crisis reserve and unused rural development funds, according to PBS.org.
Currently, 27 percent of Spanish territory is classified as in drought “emergency” or “alert,” according to the Ecological Transition Ministry, and water reserves are at 50 percent of capacity nationally.
In Spain’s Andalusia region, the Guadalquivir river basin is at 24.8 percent of its capacity, and farmers in the region have had their water allowance for irrigation cut by up to 90 percent in some cases.
