Mediterranean countries Morocco, Algeria, Spain and Portugal recorded unprecedented and unusually high temperatures during the last week of April following early summer heatwaves.
10 scientists from Morocco, France, the US, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom came together to analyze just how much the human-induced climate change had affected the heatwaves. This study published by “World Weather Attribution” reveals that “In Morocco, several April records have been broken across the country and temperatures exceeded 41°C in some cities such as Sidi-Slimane, Marrakech, Taroudant.”
The impact of these record-shattering temperatures in those regions only exacerbated the effects of the persisting drought and water scarcity on agriculture.
The natural hazard also contributes to the country’s mortality rates, as according to the same analysis, “Every year, an average of 262, 250, and 116 people die from heat-related illness in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, respectively.”
The effect of these extreme temperatures is not only limited to heatstrokes and worsened drought conditions but also comes with the threat of increased wildfires sweeping across national forests. However, areas devoured by wildfires in Morocco are considered being relatively lower than in neighboring countries, as stated by the director of the National Agency for Water and Forests (ANEF) Abderrahim Houmy at the executive committee’s meeting for the Prevention and Control of Forest Fire.
ANEF has mobilized a budget of 200 million dirhams for the year 2023 for preventative and operational actions against forest fire, and has developed, in collaboration with various concerned partners, a new Integrated Forest Fire Management Master Plan for the period 2023-2033.
They also developed a new web-system based on artificial intelligence and big data to map the risk of forest fires and trigger the intervention alerts. This system provides a daily forest fire prediction platform for the pilot region of Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima, the first of its kind in the entire Mediterranean basin.
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