Spain floods prompt torrent of false claims online
- Published on November 29, 2024 at 16:43
- 9 min read
- By Manon JACOB, Lucia Diaz, Anna HOLLINGSWORTH, AFP USA, AFP Spain, AFP Finland, AFP Greece
Copyright © AFP 2017-2024. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Posts stating dams were intentionally removed or opened to intensify the floods in Spain spread on X, after the extreme rainfalls, which caused widespread destruction, and claimed more than 220 lives in eastern and southern Spain.
Claims on Facebook and X also argued weather manipulation and geo-engineering played a role in the floods, often citing US-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) (archived here), which studies physical processes in the highest regions of the atmosphere -- and has been a long-time target of conspiracy theorists, who falsely claim it can manufacture extreme weather events.
But these claims are baseless -- often using inaccurate, out-of-context or inflated data and images to make false statements about the floods.
AFP reviewed the most commonly-found claims in English, below.
Small, outdated reservoirs
Multiple posts in November stated the floods were intentionally worsened by the opening or complete removal of dams across Spain, theories AFP debunked in Spanish and in French.
To support their argument, some posts cited data reported by European Union-funded project, "Dam Removal Europe," AFP found through keyword searches on Google (archived here).
The project does exist, but it aims to remove river barriers that cause safety or environmental issues due to a lack of maintenance.
In its 2022 report (archived here), the project states "Spain was the trailblazer of barrier removal in Europe" with 133 reportedly-removed structures that year.
The barriers targeted, experts told AFP, are reservoirs of a size that could not have worsened the size of the floods in October and November.
Atmospheric physics professor at the University of Barcelona, María del Carmen Llasat Botija (archived here), told AFP on November 20: "It is completely false that dams are being removed in Spain. Dams in Spain are necessary for the management of water resources, the production of hydroelectric energy and flood control."
While some posts illustrated their claims with images of the Forata dam surrounding the Magro river, overflowing, the dam in fact "prevented the disaster from being greater," she remarked -- as reported by Spanish newspaper, El Mundo (archived here).
César Rodríguez (archived here), secretary general for river conservation association AEMS-Ríos con Vida (archived here), also told AFP on November 4 that the capacity of the reservoirs was "insignificant" compared to the magnitude of the historic floods in Valencia.
In contrast, if left untouched, old and neglected reservoirs can pose public and environmental challenges, according to Escuder Bueno.
Mariana de Brito Helmholtz (archived here), a researcher on hydro-climatic extremes at the Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, agreed.
She told AFP on November 24 the "weirs were dismantled as part of ecosystem restoration efforts," and in some cases, she added, precisely to reduce flood risks.
She concluded: "Aging weirs can pose safety concerns if not maintained, such as the risk of breaching. Their removal is unlikely to have had any significant impact on the severity of the recent floods."
Misused atlas
People online also said a map, widely shared on social media, purports to show dams removed around flood-hit regions of Spain.
"The blue dots all indicate dams that have been removed around Valencia. This is something the mainstream media should be telling you. But they won't," an October 31 post said on X.
This claim, too, is false.
A reverse image search on Google revealed the map stems from the AMBER river barrier atlas (archived here), a data project by the European Union, which tracks barriers along European rivers in an effort to restore river ecosystems.
Using the AMBER tool and zooming in on Valencia, AFP found a map visually matching the one shared on social media, with blue dots corresponding to existing weirs, not removed dams.
The atlas marks all artificial instream barriers in Europe with different colors, which can be selected and unselected. Green dots point to dams in the region.
Unrelated vessel activity
"HAARP anyone? This was off of the coast of Spain before their floods," claims a November 7 post on Facebook -- AFP debunked similar claims in Spanish and Greek.
A keyword search for "Karadeniz Powership Orhan Khan" -- the lettering seen on the ship in the video posted on social media -- however yielded results for a Turkish merchant ship on tracking website, Marine Traffic, whose last recorded position is in the Gulf of Izmit, in the Sea of Marmara.
Shipnext, another vessel tracker, reports (archived here) the location of the vessel between coastal Turkish towns of Yalova and Darica from late October to late November, as seen in the screenshot below.
The merchant ship -- which sails under the Liberian flag -- belongs to Turkish fleet company KarPowership (archived here), and is displayed on its website.
Image
A screenshot of a vessel taken on Turkish fleet company website KarPowership on November 26, 2024
Climate impacts
Ella Gilbert, a meteorologist at the British Antarctic Survey (archived here), previously told AFP that "heatwaves, droughts, storms and floods are all caused by a variety of different conditions in the atmosphere and are often the result of the random combination of weather events."
She said it "makes no sense" to raise the idea that any technology -- including HAARP, whose site is located in Alaska and operates a few times a year -- is bringing about such extreme events.
While Mediterranean storms are common for the time of year, scientists say climate change driven by human activity is also increasing the intensity, length and frequency of extreme weather events.
The exact influence of anthropogenic warming on the recent events in Spain will require extensive scientific research but a preliminary analysis (archived here) by the World Weather Attribution indicates the deluge was made 12 percent heavier and twice as likely compared to the world before global warming.
Daniel Jato-Espino, flood risk assessment senior researcher at the International University of Valencia (archived here), agreed, citing "unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea at this time of the year, which is linked to anthropogenic climate change" as one of the drivers of the intense floods.
In turn, "this increase in temperature leads to increased water vapor formation, which rises and condenses due to the region's orography, resulting in heavy rainfall," he explained to AFP on November 26.
Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate (archived here), remarked that as severe weather events become more frequent, "climate deniers are putting extra efforts into claiming these extremes have nothing to do with climate change."
Online, "a slightly more conspiratorial and newer argument" overtakes the traditional narratives that simply deny Earth's warming "by trying to argue that extreme weather events have this other cause, whether it's geoengineering or something else," he told AFP in a previous story.
AFP has debunked other claims about extreme weather events, here, here and here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
