Scientists Say Andalusia’s Recent Weather Extremes Point to Wider Mediterranean Trend

Summary

Scientists warn that the recent weather extremes in Andalusia are part of a broader trans­for­ma­tion of the Mediterranean cli­mate, with ris­ing tem­per­a­tures inten­si­fy­ing arid­ity and extreme rain­fall episodes con­tin­u­ing to strike. Researchers at the Andalusian Institute of Agricultural Research and Training have pub­lished rec­om­men­da­tions to help olive grow­ers restore soil sta­bil­ity and pro­tect future har­vests, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of pro­tect­ing soils, mon­i­tor­ing tree health, and care­fully plan­ning har­vest­ing oper­a­tions to mit­i­gate long-term pro­duc­tiv­ity losses.

The weather extremes that recently dis­rupted parts of Andalusia’s olive oil sec­tor may have appeared sud­den and excep­tional. But sci­en­tists warn they are unfold­ing within a broader trans­for­ma­tion of the Mediterranean cli­mate. Rising tem­per­a­tures are increas­ing the atmosphere’s capac­ity to draw mois­ture from soils, grad­u­ally inten­si­fy­ing arid­ity even as extreme rain­fall episodes con­tinue to strike.

“The main fea­ture of the Mediterranean cli­mate is its huge vari­abil­ity. Such irreg­u­lar­ity in the sig­nal might severely inter­fere with our abil­ity to spot a trend,” Piero Lionello, cli­ma­tol­o­gist and pro­fes­sor of physics of the atmos­phere and oceanog­ra­phy at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies of the University of Salento, in Italy, told Olive Oil Times.

“We are unequiv­o­cally wit­ness­ing cli­mate change, a cli­mate trend of anthro­pogenic ori­gin caused by our emis­sions. Based on our sci­en­tific knowl­edge, the increase in CO₂ con­cen­tra­tions in the atmos­phere and other green­house gases clearly explains what is hap­pen­ing,” he added.

The com­bi­na­tion of strong winds and heavy rain­fall not only hit Jaén, the heart of Spain’s olive oil pro­duc­tion, but also other Andalusian provinces, includ­ing Córdoba.

“The weather con­di­tions that occurred in the Subbética region of Córdoba dur­ing approx­i­mately the sec­ond half of January and the first half of February 2026 caused pro­longed water sat­u­ra­tion of the soil pro­files,” offi­cials at the Technical Department of the coop­er­a­tive Almazaras de la Subbética told Olive Oil Times. ​“Episodes of strong winds with gusts caused a mas­sive detach­ment of fruit, fol­lowed by frosts that dam­aged both the fallen olives and the trees.”

The coop­er­a­tive is one of the most awarded pro­duc­ers in the his­tory of the NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“There were intense sur­face runoff and local­ized over­flows, land­slides that caused the drag­ging and uproot­ing of olive trees, break­age of trunks and branches in mature trees and the uproot­ing of young trees due to the strong wind gusts,” the offi­cials said.

In response to the recent floods, researchers at the Andalusian Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IFAPA) have pub­lished a set of rec­om­men­da­tions to help olive grow­ers restore soil sta­bil­ity and pro­tect future har­vests.

The rec­om­men­da­tions focus pri­mar­ily on pro­tect­ing soils and restor­ing orchard con­di­tions after pro­longed sat­u­ra­tion. IFAPA researchers advise grow­ers to avoid work­ing water­logged soils, since machin­ery traf­fic can com­pact the ground, worsen struc­tural dam­age, reduce infil­tra­tion capac­ity and increase the risk of future ero­sion.

Instead, researchers rec­om­mend sta­bi­liz­ing the sur­face as quickly as pos­si­ble. Maintaining or restor­ing veg­e­ta­tive cover between rows is con­sid­ered one of the most effec­tive tools for reduc­ing runoff and pre­vent­ing top­soil loss, par­tic­u­larly in sloped groves where intense rain­fall can rapidly carve chan­nels and carry sed­i­ment down­hill.

The guide­lines also stress the impor­tance of inspect­ing and repair­ing drainage infra­struc­ture.

Another key rec­om­men­da­tion con­cerns the health of the trees them­selves. Prolonged soil sat­u­ra­tion can stress olive roots and cre­ate favor­able con­di­tions for fun­gal dis­eases. IFAPA researchers there­fore advise grow­ers to mon­i­tor orchards closely after floods, look­ing for signs of root stress, canopy decline or the emer­gence of pathogens asso­ci­ated with exces­sive humid­ity.

Finally, the insti­tute rec­om­mends care­fully plan­ning the resump­tion of har­vest­ing oper­a­tions once groves become acces­si­ble again. Returning to the fields too early can fur­ther dam­age already weak­ened soils, while a grad­ual resump­tion of nor­mal prac­tices allows orchards to sta­bi­lize and reduces the risk of long-term pro­duc­tiv­ity losses.

“The first mea­sure we took was to report the dam­age suf­fered in the olive groves of our mem­bers to the pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion so that they would be aware of the seri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion both envi­ron­men­tally and eco­nom­i­cally,” Almazaras offi­cials said.

The cooperative’s offi­cials also acknowl­edged the spread of some fun­gal dis­eases fol­low­ing the pro­longed rain. ​“In addi­tion, many access roads became unus­able, olive grove lanes became impass­able, there was a risk of machin­ery over­turn­ing and soil com­paction due to forced tran­sit,” they said. ​“The com­bi­na­tion of all these fac­tors gen­er­ated fruit drop with the impos­si­bil­ity of har­vest­ing, soil loss with struc­tural degra­da­tion and, of course, a loss of qual­ity in the olive oils.”

They said mem­bers of the coop­er­a­tive have been imple­ment­ing veg­e­ta­tive cover between rows for years. ​“This cover has pre­vented the sit­u­a­tion from becom­ing even more chaotic, as it has pre­vented the for­ma­tion of gul­lies in areas with steep slopes,” the offi­cials said.

“In areas where grow­ers not only left veg­e­ta­tive cover between the rows but also under the canopy of the olive trees, a large part of the pro­duc­tion had already been har­vested, so the dam­age was some­what lower,” they added. ​“Harvesting as early as pos­si­ble allows us not only to obtain fruit of excel­lent qual­ity but also to avoid the risk of fruit drop.”

“Now we still need to col­lect the olives that remained in the field and carry out treat­ments to pre­vent the dis­eases that may arise from this whole sit­u­a­tion,” the offi­cials said. ​“The main risks are soil loss due to runoff and crop loss.”

Lionello said that while the Mediterranean cli­mate has always been marked by sharp swings between wet and dry peri­ods, the sys­tem’s bal­ance is shift­ing as tem­per­a­tures rise. Even when rain­fall totals remain uncer­tain or highly vari­able, the increas­ing atmos­pheric evap­o­ra­tive capac­ity is steadily reduc­ing the amount of water avail­able in soils.

“The arid­ity of a region is deter­mined by a bal­ance between how much it rains and how much water evap­o­rates,” he said. ​“On rain­fall we still have some uncer­tainty, but on evap­o­ra­tion we do not. Water that reaches the ground evap­o­rates much faster today than it did thirty years ago.”

According to the cli­ma­tol­o­gist, the cru­cial ques­tion for agri­cul­ture is not sim­ply whether rain­fall increases or decreases, but how much water ulti­mately remains acces­si­ble to crops.

“What mat­ters to farm­ers or to those man­ag­ing water resources is not just whether it rains less,” Lionello said. ​“What mat­ters is how much water remains avail­able in the sys­tem.”

Rising tem­per­a­tures are length­en­ing the dry sea­son across much of the Mediterranean basin. ​“The warm sea­son, which is typ­i­cally dry, is becom­ing longer,” he said. ​“The soil dries out ear­lier in the year.”

“These changes are already reshap­ing agri­cul­tural strate­gies,” Lionello added. ​“Most olive grow­ers in Italy did not irri­gate in the past. Now they do, because irri­ga­tion increases pro­duc­tion but also increases sen­si­tiv­ity to water short­ages. Sometimes water is lack­ing because there is less of it, and some­times because agri­cul­ture demands more.”

While sci­en­tists con­tinue to inves­ti­gate how extreme pre­cip­i­ta­tion pat­terns may evolve in the Mediterranean, Lionello said the long-term trend toward greater cli­matic stress is already evi­dent. ​“Each year can be dif­fer­ent from the pre­vi­ous one,” he said. ​“But the over­all ten­dency is clearly mov­ing in this direc­tion.”

For grow­ers on the ground, how­ever, cli­mate debates often trans­late into more imme­di­ate con­cerns. Rosario Minchón of the multi-awarded olive oil pro­ducer Pago de Espejo, in Jaén, whose early har­vest had already con­cluded before the worst of the rains arrived, framed the issue in prac­ti­cal terms.

“Some years we have a lot of rain and some years we are com­pletely dry. In my opin­ion, in Spain, water is the first issue and soil is the sec­ond,” she said, warn­ing that decades of ero­sion have already depleted large amounts of top­soil.

For Minchón, strength­en­ing water man­age­ment sys­tems and pro­tect­ing soils will remain cen­tral pri­or­i­ties for the resilience of olive groves in the years ahead.