UPDATED: This August was the hottest in Spain since records began, figures reveal

SPAIN sweltered its way to its hottest August since records began, with average temperatures of 25C.

It was 2C above the 1991-2020 average and even 20% hotter than August 2003 and 2023, the previous warmest months.

Last year, the average temperature was 24.9C, and in 2022 it was 24.8C. Six of the seven hottest average temperatures in Spain for August have all come since 2003.

Despite a brief dip below the average in the middle of the month, the temperatures remained consistently high, pushing above 28C across the country on August 10.

In the Valencian Community, with an average temperatures of 25.8C (1.4C above the average) it was the fourth hottest since records began in 1950, behind only August 2012, 2023 and 2022.

In Madrid, the thermometer did not drop below 20C for 26 nights in a row, beating the previous record of 24 consecutive nights set in 2016 and again in 2018.

“August 2024 was the warmest in history in mainland Spain,” said the state meteorological agency Aemet.

The average temperature was two-tenths higher than that in 2003 and 2023, which were previously the warmest Augusts in Spain, it said.

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Last month started with a warm period that begun on July 22 and ended on August 13 with heavy rain courtesy of a DANA that especially affected the Balearic Islands.

That was followed by a secondary warm period of lower intensity.

Based on temperatures so far this year, 2024 could surpass 2022 in being the warmest year in Spain since records began, according to Aemet.

The first eight months of both years produced average temperatures of 15.8C.

Up until now, 2022 was the hottest year on record, with an average temperature at 15.7C.

In August, the EU climate monitor, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said that it was ‘increasingly likely’ that 2024 would end up being the hottest year on record worldwide.