Dreadful flooding in Spain raises new questions about the impact of human activity on our global weather systems
After a week of torrential downpours, and with another onslaught predicted for later today, the catastrophic flooding that has devastated the eastern seaboard of Spain looks more like scenes from a disaster movie than an extreme weather event. More than 200 people have died already, and thousands are still missing after floodwaters swept away bridges and covered towns with mud and debris, leaving many communities cut off, and without water, food or electricity.
This morning the Spanish government was readying a further 5,000 troops and 5,000 police officers and civil guards to support the 1,700 soldiers that have been deployed to Valencia region, but in remarkable scenes of human solidarity thousands of Spaniards have already picked up whatever tools they could find and have been heading to hard-hit rural areas to help with the clean-up and rescue efforts. With the chances of finding survivors now starting to dwindle, efforts are being focussed on pumping water out of tunnels and car parks where it is thought people may have become trapped as the flood waters surged in.
Meanwhile further weather warnings have been issued for more rain across the weekend to hit north-eastern and southern Spain and the Balearic Islands, with some areas having already experienced more than a year’s rainfall in a single day.
In joining the many world figures who have been sending their condolences, the archbishop of Valencia has expressed “grave concern” and said Mass in a local basilica for those affected. Archbishop Enrique Benavent said he “hopes that the victims and missing persons will be found safe and sound as soon as possible,” according to the Spanish Catholic news outlet Alfa y Omega, and in a letter sent to Archbishop Benavent and Msgr. Julián Ros, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Albacete, west of Valencia, Spanish bishops shared “their pain at the difficult times that they are experiencing in their dioceses.” Caritas Spain has said it is coordinating with Valencia City Council to support people who had become trapped in municipal buildings in the region.
Whilst Spain’s deadliest floods in living memory have been yet another salutary warning that we are now living in a world with a dangerously superheated atmosphere, there has also been deep anger that the Spanish authorities didn’t respond quicker to a natural disaster that everyone knew was coming, and that have been a regular feature across Spain in recent years. The Valencia’s regional government has admitted that it only sent out a text message to residents warning them of the impending catastrophe and to seek safe refuge some eight hours after floods had started being reported. To make matters worse this warning was only dispatched 10 hours after Spain’s National State Meteorological Agency had issued a pretty unambiguous “extreme danger” alert for the Valencia region: “Be very careful! The danger is extreme. Do not go near channels or boulevards. Floods are occurring.”
Much of the prevacation and unreadiness has been a consequence of poor lines of communication between Spain’s Socialist-led national government and the centre-right local authorities responsible for the affected regions. It’s an issue that has become politically explosive as harrowing and tragic details have emerged of the desperate efforts of people to survive as they became trapped in homes, shops and vehicles as the rapidly moving floodwaters overwhelmed some towns within minutes. Rapid flash flooding is not unknown in this part of Spain, and clearly the weather warnings were there to see, so it’s understandable that serious questions are starting to be asked about how so many people could have died in a relatively anticipated event.
No doubt the recriminations and fallout will rumble on long after the clean-up has been completed, but this tragedy will also raise profound and urgent questions about the general readiness of countries to protect their citizens in the face of increasingly common extreme weather events. Spain hasn’t been the only country to be hit by deadly and damaging floods in recent weeks – there have been similar events in Germany, Greece and Belgium over the past few years.
Most experts have agreed that this latest weather event is unquestionably down to climate change. The Mediterranean Sea reached its highest recorded temperature in history in August and high sea temperatures and evaporation leads to more water being carried up into the clouds. In turn, heavily salinised moisture droplets in cloud formations makes heavy rainfall far more likely.
The effect of salt in clouds is a well-established and much-researched chain reaction that has been used by scientists for more than half a century in an effort to manipulate rainfall and prevent drought, in a process known as ‘cloud seeding’.
Cloud seeding is a favourite among conspiracy theorists who love to see winter vapour trails across the sky and make fanciful assumptions about covert government operations, dangerous chemicals and population control. Like all good conspiracy theories there is a factual underpinning, particularly as cloud seeding is a developing science as governments seek desperately to find mechanisms – other than cleaning up their act – to control our increasingly unpredictable and dangerous weather. Scientists have actually been toying with cloud and rain manipulation since the late 1800s, and the first cloud seeding aeroplane took to the skies in upstate New York on 13th November 1946.
Since then, there has been an unseemly rush to develop aircraft-borne mechanisms to control the weather. Not surprisingly the world’s largest system is in China, where silver iodide rockets are fired into the sky wherever rain is required. Of course, the political and strategic potential of a system that could simply and inexpensively deliver floods or drought at will to another country is a science that is attracting intense military attention, and China in particular has become focussed on the significance of water – or the lack of it – in controlling and dominating other countries.
Spain even has its own cloud seeding project, managed by the Consorcio por la Lucha Antigranizo de Aragon, aimed reducing rain and hail damage to its precious export crops. Neighbouring Morocco’s Al-Ghaith programme, which has been operating since 1984, has invested nearly €10 million in cloud seeding since 2023 in an effort to combat six successive years of drought, with the country’s annual rainfall level at a critical 70% less than 30 years ago. Ironically Spain has been voicing deep concerns for some time now about the Morocco project, with the Spanish weather agency El Tiempo warning that it could lead to soil erosion, environmental issues – and even severe flooding in several Spanish regions. No doubt this latest, violent and largely under-estimated weather event will add new urgency to those concerns.
Whilst this will be yet another field day for the conspiracy theorists, there will also be nervousness amongst governments that the focus of public concern – and environmental campaigning in particular – may shift onto a technology that has so far remained largely unreported, and certainly not subject to any serious public scrutiny. As well as broad concerns about the dangers of the human manipulation of natural weather systems, no serious research has yet been conducted into the routine habit of infusing cloud systems with silver iodide, which is known to be toxic to human health at high levels and is regulated in most countries as a hazardous substance.
As far back as 1965 the US-based National Science Foundation called for urgent research to be conducted, stating that: “If the developing techniques of weather and climate modification are to be used intelligently, the human consequences of deliberate or inadvertent intervention need to be anticipated before they are upon us.”
In 2017 the World Meteorological Organisation adopted guidelines advising members not to perform weather modification without further research into the uncertain impact and the potential harms involved, but this is technology that has so far been kept well out of the public sphere of concern.
In his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis spoke of his own concerns about the negative impact that human development was having on the fragile balance of our global ecosystem.
“I urgently appeal … for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.” (Laudato Si’, 14).
In section II of his encyclical, Francis makes special mention of the ‘issue of water’.
“Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatise this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market … it is also conceivable that the control of water by large multinational businesses may become a major source of conflict in this century.” (Laudato Si’, 30-31).
No doubt Francis is thinking here of the commercialisation of water supplies, and its manipulation for political ends. As we can see around the world, strategically motivated irrigation and dam projects are already impacting negatively on millions of people of vulnerable people, and even within the developed world the control and supply of healthy and safe water is rapidly becoming a critical challenge – as we can see all to clearly here in Britain with the increasingly dangerous and persistent pollution of our vital fresh water sources.
In the rarified environment of a laboratory, it has no doubt been very tempting to think that human ingenuity could develop a mechanism for creating endless safe water, and the harnessing of our climate patterns, hence the rush towards cloud seeding and similar technologies to manipulate weather and rainfall systems.
Sadly though, this is yet another example of human relativism thinking it can establish functioning alternatives to the divinely constructed mechanisms that actually drive and preserve our global home. It is also a consequence of the desperately flawed belief that one can continue to exploit a system ruthlessly, just so long as antidotes are invented continually to alleviate the consequences of this excess.
In a few weeks’ time delegates from around the world will be making their way to the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November. Yet again this conference is being hailed as another “key moment” and a “unique opportunity” to reverse the damage being done by human industrial activities. Ahead of COP29, world leaders came together at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and adopted a Pact for the Future that the UN Secretary-General described as “turbocharging the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, accelerating a just transition away from fossil fuels, and securing a peaceful and liveable future for everyone on our planet.”
In 28 high-powered sessions led by the world’s most powerful leaders and influencers so far, almost nothing has been achieved in reducing the critical greenhouse gases that are disrupting our weather patterns and air supply so badly. In fact, behind the scenes it looks like this disinclination is being offset by continued forays into highly experimental technologies whose consequences are yet unproven, and maybe even more damaging to our fragile eco-system.
As we have seen this week in Eastern Spain, it will be increasingly necessary to build more robust and predictive mechanisms to offset our already destabilised climate, but nothing short of an acceptance that this planet was a gift from God that needs to be curated wisely according to divine principles will reverse the damage being caused by climate change.
Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian