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Climate Change Widened Valencia's 2024 Extreme Rain Footprint by 55%, Study Finds
- On February 17, 2026, researchers published a Nature Communications study finding Valencia's October 2024 deluge had a 55 percent larger area with about seven inches of rain in 24 hours.
- Researchers found short-term rainfall intensity rose about 21 percent over a six-hour period, using real-world data to simulate floods against preindustrial climate baselines.
- In just a few hours, more rain fell on Valencia than in an average year, triggering flash floods that swept away bridges, cars and even derailed a train.
- More than 230 people in Spain were killed by the floods, and study authors warned of an `immediate need` to ensure cities are prepared for future extremes.
- Scientists had long speculated climate change played a role and the study now quantifies that influence, but attribution scientists caution it remains difficult to assign exact warming shares to single events.
19 Articles
19 Articles
Climate change widened Valencia's 2024 extreme rain footprint by 55%, study finds
Human-driven climate change intensified rainfall that triggered Spain's deadliest natural disaster in a generation when flash floods hit the Valencia region in 2024, a new study showed on Tuesday.
Climate change increased by 21% the intensity of the dana rain in Valencia in which 238 people died.
The influence of climate change in the dana of Valencia of 2024, which took the lives of 238 people, is "clearly," sums up researcher Carlos Calvo-Sancho, currently at the Center for Research on Desertification (CIDE-CSIC). He has led the first study that is 'put' in the storm and his main conclusions indicate that global warming increased the amount of rain and, especially, the area of influence of the dana. In fact, the area in which more than…
The work, published in Nature, is the first to "enter one of the most destructive storms in Spain's recent history" and explain how global warming caused it to affect more areas of the Valencian Community, and more intensely
In the modern era there has been no more monstrous storm in Spain than the dana of Valencia of October 2024, in which 769 liters per square metre were recorded in 18 hours, 11 tornadoes and large hail, leaving behind enormous material destruction and more than 230 deaths. From the following days, preliminary quick attribution studies pointed out that the catastrophe had been intensified by climate change.
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