Can Catalonia learn to live with drought?

"We will change because there's no other option for us," says scientist Vicenç Acuña, as he gestures towards the almost empty Sau reservoir in Catalonia. We should be looking at a huge artificial lake, but instead the concrete wall of the reservoir barrage is bare, towering above the valley and the remaining brown water tens of metres below. It hasn't rained enough in this region for nearly four years, and this reservoir, one of the main supplies for the Barcelona region, is below 15% capacity.

Here in the hinterlands of Catalonia, near the town of Vic, the hills used to be known for cascades and waterfalls, but today they are a draw for tourists and journalists who come to photograph a once-flooded valley turned giant dustbowl.

At the beginning of February, the region declared an official drought emergency, limiting water consumption for agriculture, industry, and private use like refilling swimming pools.

Our visit to Catalonia comes as the Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that February was the warmest on record globally, with temperature 0.8 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.

We have now had nine months in a row of record-breaking warm temperatures for the time of year.

In Europe, there were large warm anomalies in many countries. Temperatures in Romania were 6.8 degrees above average for February, Switzerland was 4.6 degrees above average, and England was 2.9 degrees above the average for the month.

The surface temperature of the ocean outside polar regions also broke a new absolute record, averaging 21.06 degrees Celsius in February.

Today there is growing pressure to accelerate adaptation efforts in Catalonia, a region which is no stranger to drought. Many of the installations now in place were built in