Marc Lemus-Canovas

Andorra Research + Innovation

A la península Ibèrica i les illes Balears hi ha algunes de les regions del sud d'Europa on els tornados es presenten amb una major freqüència. En tot aquest àmbit de mitjana es detecten entre 22 i 29 tornados cada any, dels quals un 9 % són significatius (i.e. d'intensitat F2/EF2 o superior). Es concentren, sobretot, a la façana mediterrània i al...

The western Mediterranean region experienced an exceptional and unprecedented early heatwave in April 2023. By shattering historical temperature records, especially in the Iberian Peninsula and northwestern Africa, this extreme offers a stark illustration of a drought–heatwave compound event. Here we investigate the soil moisture–temperature intera...

The present article analyses the synoptic framework associated with tornadic events on the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. We discussed the spatial and temporal distribution of tornadoes in the study area, subsequently performing a principal component analysis using 500 hPa geopotential height and mean sea level pressure data from ERA5...

Rainfall behavior is a fundamental issue in areas with scarce and irregular amounts, such as the Spanish Mediterranean region. We identified 12 spatial patterns that characterized 899 torrential precipitation events (≥150 mm in 24 h) that occurred in the 3,537 rainy precipitation series in the period 1950–2020. Three of these components––eastern an...

Intense rainfall (≥100 mm/24 h) constitutes the most frequent atmospheric hazard on Spain’s Mediterranean coast; this phenomenon causes serious damage to property and kills or injures inhabitants. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its latest report in 2022, indicates that in the current climate change scenario, these episodes will b...

Although the literature still debates how several anthropogenic and natural factors have contributed to the recent streamflow decline in the Iberian Peninsula, a continuing decrease in winter precipitation (WP) has been noticed in this area since the 1980s and has been associated with large-scale atmospheric drivers. This contribution assesses the...

Heat and cold waves are extreme temperature events with a high potential of causing negative impacts on human health, and natural and socioeconomic systems, depending on their duration and intensity. There is, however, no consensual approach to address their definition, which is critical to set priority action areas to prevent such risks. Mainland...

Compound extremes have increasingly become the focus of research in recent years, due to the strong impact they have upon society and ecosystems. Few studies, however, address the role of teleconnection patterns in these compound extremes, and how the former can be used to predict the latter. The present study quantifies the changes observed in the...

Precipitation irregularity constitutes a constraint for natural systems and socio-economic activities, particularly in water-scarce environments. Standard variability statistics such as the standard deviation, variance, and coefficient of variation do not consider the chronological order of these values. In Climatology, however, the temporal order...

A significant abrupt decrease of Winter Precipitation (WP) has been noticed in the Iberian Peninsula since the 1980s related to atmospheric drivers. This contribution assesses the long-term variability of water resources based on a multivariate-driven approach. For this purpose, the novel dataset of Near Natural Water Inflows to Reservoirs of Spain...

The World Health Organization defines an annual average threshold of 40 μg m−3 as the safe limit for human health. This threshold was clearly surpassed in 2018 in a large part of the Barcelona area during weekdays. In view of these data, it is of great interest to ascertain whether the impact of large-scale meteorological situations enables NO2 con...

Many studies of Mediterranean ecosystems have analyzed vegetation recovery after a wildfire based on fieldwork or remote sensing; however, only a few have adopted a multi approach assessment. The aim of this study is to determine the viability of a multi approach using vegetation and remote sensing to observe vegetation recovery time in areas with...

Impacts upon vulnerable areas such as mountain ranges may become greater under a future scenario of adverse climatic conditions. In this sense, the concurrence of long dry spells and extremely hot temperatures can induce environmental risks such as wildfires, crop yield losses or other problems, the consequences of which could be much more serious...

Mountain systems within the Mediterranean region, e.g., the Pyrenees, are very sensitive to climate change. In the present study, we quantified the magnitude of extreme precipitation events and the number of days with torrential precipitation (daily precipitation ≥ 100 mm) in all the rain gauges available in the Pyrenees for the 1981-2015 period, a...

Mountain systems within the Mediterranean region, e.g. the Pyrenees, are very sensitive to climate change. In the present study, we quantified the magnitude of extreme precipitation events and the number of days with torrential precipitation (daily precipitation ≥ 100 mm) in all the rain gauges available in the Pyrenees for the 1981-2015 period, an...

The western Mediterranean region often suffers from the devastating effects of flooding, caused by enormous rain accumulations that sometimes resemble the values produced by tropical systems. Despite the climatic and social relevancy of this type of episodes, there are some fundamental questions that would still be difficult to answer today, for ex...

Impacts upon vulnerable areas such as mountain ranges may become greater under a future scenario of adverse climatic conditions. In this sense, the concurrence of long dry spells and extremely hot temperatures can induce environmental risks such as wildfires, crop yield losses or other problems, the consequences of which could be much more serious...

Trends in seasonal mean values of maximum and minimum temperature are analyzed in the Spanish mainland from the new MOTEDAS_century database. This new data set has been developed combining the digitalized archives from the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) with information retrieved from Annual Books published by the former Meteorological Agenc...

Precipitation constitutes a particularly variable climatic element in Spain. Study of teleconnection indices, closely related to precipitation, enables us to establish to a greater or lesser degree the mechanisms regulating pluviometric variability; these are vital for planning and managing water resources in semiarid regions. In the present paper...

Previous studies have demonstrated the existence of a statistically significant influence of the Western Mediterranean Oscillation index (WeMOi) upon the precipitation of Catalonia (northeast Spain). In the present study, we analyse the statistical relationship between the WeMOi-precipitation correlation coefficients and two statistical indices at...

The Pyrenees is a mountain range that presents a very broad range of climatic diversity, as well as a multitude of geographical factors conditioning precipitation in this region. In-depth knowledge of this precipitation, specifically of its association with atmospheric circulation types in mountain regions, is of great importance for the management...

Management of hydric resources in alpine mountains requires spatial knowledge of precipitation as a variable of noteworthy importance in the study of hydrological hazards (avalanches, landslides, floods, etc.), especially during the winter season. We therefore study the spatial distribution of mean daily precipitation (MDP) and daily precipitation...

The present study focuses on the relationship between the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet stream and European ground level ozone (O 3) during summer. We have followed a "circulation-to-environment" approach to investigate how the spatial variability of the jet can induce changes in the O 3 concentrations over different regions. We have also used an...

En el marco de la predicción de aludes, el conocimiento de los volúmenes de precipitación asociados a las distintas situaciones atmosféricas que se producen durante la temporada (noviembre-mayo), son esenciales para prever el hipotético espesor de la nieve reciente y, en consecuencia, el posible tamaño de las avalanchas. El conocimiento de la distr...

Southern Catalonia is an area characterized by high temporal irregularity of rainfall, and this fact gives rise to different natural hazards such as floods, landslides, etc. The present study aims to define the behavior of precipitation in this region of Catalonia at different time scales during the study period (1951-2014) by means of precipitatio...