Potential impact of climate change on heatwaves at the urban scale: An evaluation in Valencia, Spain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Global temperatures have risen rapidly over the past six decades, with the Mediterranean region recognized as a climate hotspot due to its accelerated warming and declining precipitation. In this context, heatwaves have become more frequent, longer, and more intense, causing growing risks to human health, ecosystems, and urban resilience. This study aims to quantify the historical (1979–2014) and projected (up to 2100) evolution of heatwaves in Valencia, Spain. Daily maximum temperatures (°C) and relative humidity (%) from five CMIP6 global climate models under three emission scenarios were used, complemented with observational records. The heat index is used to better assess the impact of heat on human health. Temporal trend analyses and spatial interpolation are applied to assess changes in frequency, duration and intensity. Results show that during 1979–2014, the heatwave frequency increased by approximately two events per decade, while their mean duration rose from under 10 to nearly 25 days. Under future scenarios, intensification continues: by mid-century frequency may increase by up, 3.6 additional events per decade, and toward the end of the century there seems to be shift toward a quasi-permanent heat season, as episodes merge into fewer but longer events. Rising humidity further amplifies thermal stress, enhancing the human health impact. Despite uncertainties inherent in climate projections, these findings highlight the need to revisit heatwave definitions refine thermal risk thresholds, and adopt robust adaptation strategies for Mediterranean cities. • Heatwaves in the Mediterranean region and in Valencia have risen since 1979 and are projected to increase in the future. • Warmer springs and longer autumns in Valencia will extend heatwave exposure. • Rising humidity and prolonged heatwaves enhances thermal stress intensifying health risk in Mediterranean cities. • Future heatwaves in the Mediterranean region are projected to merge into fewer, longer, and more persistent events.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".