Málaga shatters Spain's December temperature record with 29.9°C

Málaga shatters its December record by 4.9 degrees

The highest temperature ever recorded in Spain during December did not reach 30 degrees. The thermometer at the Málaga Meteorological Center registered 29.9°C at 2:20 PM, a December temperature record that leaves the previous observation from that station, 24.5°C, nearly five degrees behind. The episode is attributed to a warm air mass and the terral wind, with meteorologist Scott Duncan describing it as an historic day: the hottest December day ever observed in Spain.

The figure went global, triggering the usual two reactions. Some read it as confirmation of the global trend. Others look for the asterisk. The debate is structured around three fronts: how much a short historical series is worth, the weight of individual memory, and whether a gas representing 0.04% of the atmosphere can bear the blame for everything.

How much does a sample starting 'since records exist' weigh?

'Since records exist' is the phrase that raises the most suspicion. The question is posed in arithmetic terms: since what year? How many years are those compared to the age of the planet? Does that sample allow for a scientifically rigorous judgment? From this starting point, a current of analysis concludes that the record is pure demagogy and that the study's validity is zero.

On the other side is the reading by Aemet itself, which highlights the magnitude of the jump: breaking a record by 4.9 degrees is much less likely without the observed global climate change, and also in Spain. It is not the same to improve a mark by two-tenths as by nearly five degrees, and that is where the data ceases to be anecdotal.

The third argument, less intuitive, questions the tool. It is argued that there is no 150-year planetary series with tenth-of-a-degree precision, and that what exists are models integrating uncertain, incomplete, and inconsistent data. With this basis, it is asserted that there is insufficient data to rule out random variation, nor to attribute the phenomenon primarily to humans. The one asking for more years and the one asking to compare the station with the whole do not move a millimeter.

New Year's Eve in short sleeves: anecdote versus series

Resistance to the record has a weapon that needs no models: memory. In Málaga, there was a New Year's Eve in 1994 with 24°C, and subsequent years behaved similarly. More than one New Year's Eve, and more than two, have been spent at La Malagueta with drinks on the sand and short sleeves almost twenty years ago. Some remember warm Decembers in Asturias with windows open on Christmas Eve, and others have dined outdoors in Valencia in the dead of winter.

Memory also plays in the opposite direction. Others recall harsh, rainy winters, frozen puddles in February, snowfalls every ten or fifteen years, and a November when the Pisuerga River froze enough to walk for a few meters on it. From this arises the most repeated hypothesis: that a tendency toward warmer climate does not prevent cold winters from returning, because things operate in cycles of five to seven years and depend on the anticyclone, La Niña, and El Niño.

Over all of this looms a warning shared by both sides: anecdote is not the norm. Converting a mild December from thirty years ago into proof that nothing changes has the same methodological problem as converting an afternoon of 29.9 degrees into a final judgment.

The 0.04% of CO2 and water vapor: the argument that returns every December

The oldest front is physical. Some argue that CO2 accounts for 0.04% of the mass of the atmosphere and that the greenhouse effect of water vapor is a hundred times greater, making it difficult to grant the first control of the thermostat. It is added that CO2 is a beneficial gas — below 0.02% plants die — and that more heat and humidity translate into more plant mass. From there to imagining Russia or Kazakhstan producing grain like Argentina is a step some take without blushing.

Another derivative of the same reasoning: if temperatures rise, more water will evaporate, the atmosphere will retain more moisture, and it will rain more. Why does almost no one talk about that consequence? The usual reply is that a warm period coinciding with the Roman or Medieval Optimum says nothing about the estimulante ilegal of current change, and that a gas necessary for plants is not harmless in excess. The pulse remains just as open.

There even appears the suspicion that records are inflated: it is claimed that in some areas maximums of 47°C have been announced when the local thermometer would not have passed 43°C. There is no verification of this accusation in the material, which circulates as opinion without backing. To close the chapter, a simple test is proposed: approach a port with a reference level. The zero altitude benchmark in Spain was fixed in Alicante 170 years ago and, according to this argument, sea level has not moved since then.

From the electricity bill to China's emissions

Any record ends up in the same place: the wallet. The sequence described sarcastically is heat, climate apocalypse, prohibition, taxes, and more taxes, with the suspicion that those insisting most on the emergency do not give up anything when it comes to tightening their belts. The recurring comparison looks to China: it asks why the effort falls on the Spanish taxpayer and not on who concentrates emissions.

Climate summits are also criticized, with delegations arriving at COP28 invoking zero emissions while the air deployment goes another way. And a final irony, the most economic of all: the temperature record is front-page news while the historic high of public debt does not deserve even a headline.

December 12 was fixed at 29.9°C. In Marbella, that same day, people ate on terraces with 17 degrees and a breeze. In Oviedo, 9 degrees and rain. The series says one thing, each person's memory says another, and the bill waits at the end of any answer. How many Decembers like this are needed for the asterisk to disappear?