Disaster-hit regions are tending to their wounds, grieving families are still mourning their dead, and despite the losses, most farmers are quietly relieved after six consecutive years of historic drought. This year’s rainfall—exceptional in its intensity—has triggered mixed reactions in Morocco. Overall, however, it has brought relief to a sector that is crucial to the country’s economy. The question that remains is what lies behind the extreme weather events that struck the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco in early 2026.
A climatology study examining these events was published on Thursday, February 26, pointing to climate change. Just as global warming drives recurrent droughts that batter countries, it also fuels torrential rains and floods that can be just as destructive. This is currently the case in France, where a red alert has remained in place for an extended period.
According to a report by World Weather Attribution (WWA)—a group of scientists that investigates links between extreme weather and climate change—the wettest days in the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco are about 30% wetter than in the pre-industrial era, when the climate was 1.3°C cooler.
Between January 16 and February 17, 2026, nine storms brought torrential rain and strong winds to Spain, Portugal and the Moroccan kingdom, causing more than 50 deaths and forcing over 200,000 people to leave their homes, particularly in Morocco.
In Grazalema, one of the hardest-hit municipalities in southern Spain, the equivalent of more than a year’s worth of normal rainfall fell in just a few days, WWA said. “The volume of water observed in places like Grazalema was staggering,” said David García-García, a climatologist at the University of Alicante and co-author of the report. He described it as a “massive shock” to infrastructure and soils.
“This is exactly what climate change looks like: weather patterns that were once manageable are now turning into far more dangerous disasters,” added Friederike Otto of Imperial College London.
WWA estimates that precipitation intensity is now around 11% higher in northern Portugal and north-western Spain than it was during the pre-industrial period. However, researchers were unable to quantify the impact of climate change on rainfall in southern Iberia and northern Morocco, where the data point to diverging indicators.
According to WWA, a “blocked” high-pressure system over Scandinavia and Greenland drove “storm after storm” across western Europe in early 2026, creating wetter-than-normal conditions.
Warmer-than-usual waters in the Atlantic, west of the Iberian Peninsula, “supercharged” storms with moisture, the group explained.
WWA is regarded as a pioneer in attribution science, which uses established scientific methods to rapidly assess the influence of climate change on extreme weather. The technique compares a present-day drought or flood with simulations of the climate before humanity entered the fossil-fuel era in the 1800s.
WWA scrutinised meteorological data—focusing on the most extreme daily rainfall episodes in the three countries—and correlated them with pre-industrial-era trends to measure how significantly these phenomena have changed over time.
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