Deadly storms and extreme heatwaves are 'two sides of same climate crisis coin'

Residents of Chiva, a small town on the outskirts of Valencia, can expect a grim future of worsening drought as the planet heats up and the country dries out. But on Tuesday, they also witnessed a year's worth of rainfall in a matter of hours.

- Ajit Niranjan

The torrential rains that flooded southern and eastern Spain, ripping away bridges and tearing through towns, have killed dozens of people. Fossil fuel pollution plays a role in warping both extremes of the water cycle: heat evaporates water, leaving people and plants parched, but hot air can hold more moisture, increasing the potential for catastrophic downpours.

"Droughts and floods are the two sides of the same climate change coin," said Stefano Materia, an Italian climate scientist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. He said studies had linked droughts in the Mediterranean with the climate crisis through changes in atmospheric circulation at the same time that global temperature rise had severely heated the region.