--- title: Spain and Portugal Experience Hottest April Ever Recorded description: The extreme heat in the western Mediterranean region would have been almost impossible without climate change. canonical: https://time.com/6277906/spain-portugal-hottest-april-on-record/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-08T13:41:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:15.071Z article:section: Climate og:title: Spain and Portugal Experience Hottest April Ever Recorded og:description: The extreme heat in the western Mediterranean region would have been almost impossible without climate change. og:url: https://time.com/6277906/spain-portugal-hottest-april-on-record/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0e03893ebddb3e9b/698a3cafcabb1d5d9ee51612/spain-extreme-heat-record-april-2023.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: TOPSHOT-SPAIN-CLIMATE-WEATHER-WARMING og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Spain and Portugal Experience Hottest April Ever Recorded twitter:description: The extreme heat in the western Mediterranean region would have been almost impossible without climate change. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0e03893ebddb3e9b/698a3cafcabb1d5d9ee51612/spain-extreme-heat-record-april-2023.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Spain and Portugal Experience Hottest April Ever Recorded > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Future Proof: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Future Proof is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Making sense of the climate and energy economy. Future Proof examines the forces transforming energy and climate, and what those changes mean for business, technology, policy and the global economy. Senior correspondent Justin Worland goes beyond traditional climate coverage to connect the energy transition to the bigger decisions reshaping companies, markets and society. 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Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=9073882f-df54-4560-b6eb-7dfe1b1d0209&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Setting Boundaries: Johan Rockström's Quest for a Healthy Planet [Watch (HLS stream): Setting Boundaries: Johan Rockström's Quest for a Healthy Planet](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ZJVfj7hC.m3u8) (6:28)  _Published 2023-04-20. In the climate science world, Johan Rockström is known as a bit of a... rockstar. He's on the 2023 TIME100 list. He has a viral TED Talk. He stars in a Netflix documentary. And when people talk about the practical steps needed to slow climate change, they talk about his work._ by [Laura Millan / Bloomberg](https://time.com/author/bloomberg/) ## Laura Millan / Bloomberg Contributor May 8, 2023 1:41 PM UTC  A couple ride a Vespa motorcycle past a street thermometer reading 44 degrees Celsius in Seville on April 26, 2023 as Spain is bracing for an early heat wave. A couple ride a Vespa motorcycle past a street thermometer reading 44 degrees Celsius in Seville on April 26, 2023 as Spain is bracing for an early heat wave. CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP—Getty Images by [Laura Millan / Bloomberg](https://time.com/author/bloomberg/) ## Laura Millan / Bloomberg Contributor May 8, 2023 1:41 PM UTC Spain and Portugal recorded their hottest April on record as a mass of hot air brought [temperatures](https://time.com/6202849/extreme-heat-health-risks/) above 30C and close to 40C in some areas at the end of the month. Last month was the fourth-hottest month of April on record globally for the 1991 to 2020 period, according to a report by the European Union’s Earth observation agency Copernicus. Parts of Africa, the area around the Caspian Sea, Southeast Asia, Japan and northern North America were all much warmer than average. [Extreme heat](https://time.com/6198720/heatwave-health-death-toll/) in the western Mediterranean region would have been almost impossible without [climate change](https://time.com/tag/climate-change/), a different scientific report concluded last week. Greenhouse gases emitted by humans have warmed the planet by about 1.2C since pre-industrial times, and every year since 2015 has been among the warmest on record. --- ### More from TIME --- Average temperatures in the Iberian Peninsula in April were 3C above the average between 1991 and 2020, according to a separate statement on Monday by Spanish meteorological agency Aemet. Maximum temperatures during the month were 4.7C above average, with 38.8C recorded at the airport of the southern city of Córdoba on April 27. The heat wave happened amid a widespread drought that’s hitting the region for the second consecutive year. April was [Spain](https://time.com/6200153/first-named-heat-wave-zoe-seville/)’s driest month since records started in 1961, according to Aemet. The month was also drier than average south of the Alps, in regions of Mediterranean France, north-western Scandinavia, the Baltic countries and much of western Russia. This year, average temperatures are expected to remain warm amid a growing likelihood that an El Niño event will emerge toward the second part of the year. This phenomenon occurs when the equatorial Pacific warms and reacts with the atmosphere, disrupting weather patterns across the planet. During April, “above-average temperatures were observed over the equatorial eastern Pacific, which is an early sign for a potential transition to El Niño conditions often leading to warmer global temperatures,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. In contrast, Alaska, Mongolia, the Arabian Peninsula, India and Australia were colder than average in April. Meanwhile, the south-eastern US, parts of east Asia, north-western Australia and Tanzania were wetter than average. ## Transcript I've always been important but it's more important than ever. We're putting the stability and health of the entire Earth system. At-risk day is a reminder that we not have to become what I called stewards of Guardian of the stability of the entire planet. In the climate Science World Johan. Rockstrom is known as a bit of a rock star. He's on the 2023 time 100 list, he has a viral tedtalk, he stars in the Netflix documentary and when people talk about the Practical steps needed to slow climate change, they talk about his work, he's best known as one of the scientist who developed something called the planetary boundaries framework. It's sometimes called the PBS and it's a way for everyone from scientists to politicians, to Business Leaders to evaluate 9 system that regulate Earth as a livable planet, each system, or PB has a boundary that humans can't afford to cross if we want to keep living on Earth. In the latest assessment. Six of the nine boundaries are outside of the safe space D6, our climate by diversity freshwater. Nitrogen phosphorus air, pollutants and chemical overloading depressing news report about climate change from the United Nations, which showed that the planet is warming at a rate that pretty much guarantees things like catastrophic drought, flooding, and species Extinction. So what should we focus on right now? Large Transformations. We need to urgently accomplished to come back with an amount as well, plan the future. I wouldn't plan to boundary is the energy transition soap to phase out, fossil fuels oil, coal and gas, cutting emissions by half every decade of a Nazi World economy by 2050, and the food system transition, it is about feeding Humanity without expanding into the remaining 60%. Land areas that are still intact nature and to produce food, and why is that do not destroy water, continue building carbon and do not, pollute are an old environment around it. Even in the face of these formidable challenges Rostrum is still hopeful. He points to Green shoot signs of Hope like the fact that renewable energy is increasing exponentially. We're seeing you know on average something like 10% of global electricity coming from solar and wind. If we continue on the pace we are today we would have over half 50% of the real Christie coming from wind and solar. Just buy 20, 30, second place, he sees green shoots is in changing ways of food production. Practices that have been around for decades with car to Coffee nature as much as possible to let routing systems and carbon and soil. Biology, be much more than a healthy State. We can Sequester carbon but also have more water holding capacity better routing depth, more resilient crops combine that with eating more healthy food, having diets that are more diverse. Can only give us a better healthy life but also contribute significantly to A Healthy Planet and we manage the planet. The simple answer is yes. We've done it before. In the late 1970s early 1980s, when were destroying the stratospheric, ozone layer with a big ozone hole caused by chemicals that we used for air conditioners on an ant spray and then different shampoo, products, science, identify the hole in the ozone. Layer policy responded with the Montreal protocol of 1987 and industries that stuff. An Innovative and delivered solution that were scalable. That could take us off those Planet damaging chemicals. We can't today conclude that the ozone hole is closing in and we've been able to protect life on Earth. As we know it, we can do the same for climate understands that word, we is complicated. The fact that is powered by fossil fuel energy. Systems is not something that any individual can solve on his or her own, but we can all vote with with outfeed. Keep the dialogue alive engage in in the passwords towards us. share those stories with your friends because if everyone has a buzz, if create a momentum, which is, I think what the world really needs right now, Rocks from teachers for a living. He works with young people, so he knows how worried and angry they are about the state of the planet. In fact, he's been a mentor of sorts to Greta thunberg, a relationship that began as she was found in Friday's for future, my fellow colleagues. Over the years, we've been kind of wondering, where are they use? Because it is in a way unacceptable, what, what we're doing to planet Earth? And I, we are at risk of handing, over a planet to the Next Generation Which is less and less livable before the game. And then all her fellow Fighters and future. Use roles in the 2018 took off in the first Global demonstration to try to Future was held in Berlin who spent the day together as much as we can as supporting use woman. They have such a cute message, listen to science and act accordingly. What? Right? Do we have to hand over less livable world to our children than the planet where we were born on? Waiting for jumpy ride, more droughts and floods, heatwaves challenges, melting ice or we can at least they're all from the most disastrous and unmanageable outcomes. The window for that is still open and we have the solutions. 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