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The Iberian Peninsula is widely considered as one of the main hot-spots of climate change. However, the type and magnitude of the impacts to which the different regions of the Iberian Peninsula are exposed are quite different. To improve the knowledge of the future vulnerability of the Cantabrian coast, this contribution identifies the weather hazards which produced quantifiable damages in the city of Santander between 1996 and 2023, characterizes them according to the atmospheric circulation patterns, and studies their temporal evolution over the last decades.Several databases have been combined to carry out this contribution. On the one hand, information on economic claims for extraordinary damages recorded by the Consorcio de Seguros, under the categories of flooding (inundaciones extraordinarias), windstorms (tempestades ciclnicas atpicas) and wavestorms Embates de Mar). In addition, that information is disaggregated spatially, which allows a better approximation of the spatial vulnerability. In relation to the meteorological data, the observed values of different meteorological variables at Santander Airport were collected, as well as the sea level values from two existing tide gauges. This information has been supplemented by analogous records from the ERA5 database, available from COPERNICUS (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-single-levels?tab=overview). Finally, a synoptic catalogue (elaborated following the Jenkinson and Collison procedure) and a cyclone track database (Northern Hemisphere Extratropical Cyclone Tracks; https://canwin-datahub.ad.umanitoba.ca/data/dataset/nsidc-extratropical-cyclone-tracking-cnect), were also used to characterize the large-scale circulation patterns.Throughout the study period, the city suffered weather events that produced damage of different amounts and spatial location. Flooding is responsible for the large number of claims, caused by episodes of heavy rainfall. These can occur at any time of the year; however, while winter events tend to be of moderate hourly intensity and prolonged in time, due to extratropical disturbances, summer events tend to cause very high intensities in short periods of time, as corresponds to convective events triggered by upper throughs and high sea temperatures. In some cases, a high sea level also contributes to flooding by blocking the flow of the rain to the sea. Windstorms are also a common phenomenon in Santander. They correspond to storms with two trajectories (W-NW and S), the first being responsible for the most damaging episodes. Finally, coastal storms produce a relatively small number of economic damages, due to the low exposition of the city to these phenomena. They are generated by a swell caused by storms usually far from the Iberian Peninsula in combination with spring tides.
Álvarez et al. (Fri,) studied this question.