In this paper we identify warming thresholds, rates, and forcing mechanisms from a novel alpine temperature record of the southern Iberian Peninsula during the Common Era in order to contextualize the modern warming and its potential impact on these vulnerable alpine ecosystems. To do so, we have developed and applied the first lacustrine temperature calibration in alpine lakes for algal compounds, called long-chain alkyl diols, which is a significant advance in biomarker paleothermometry.

A database of reference evapotranspiration (ET_o) was obtained and made publicly available for Spain covering the 1961–2014 period at a spatial resolution of 1.1 km. Previous to ET_o calculation, data of required climate variables were interpolated and validated, and the uncertainty was estimated. Obtained ET_o values can be used to calculate irrigation requirements, improve drought studies (our main motivation) and study the impact of climate change, as a positive trend was detected.

Spanish TEmperature At Daily scale (STEAD) is a new daily gridded maximum and minimum temperature dataset for Spain. It covers the whole territory of peninsular Spain and the Balearic and Canary Islands at a 5 km × 5 km spatial resolution for the 1901–2014 period. This product is useful not only for climatic analysis but also to provide support to any other climate-related variable and for decision-making purposes.

Drought events are of great importance in most Mediterranean climate regions, and the impacts caused on rainfed crops are particularly evident. In this study the impacts of drought on two representative rainfed crops in Spain (wheat and barley) are assessed by testing various worldwide drought indices and two datasets at different spatial resolution.

Drought is a major driver of vegetation activity in Spain. Here we used a high-resolution remote-sensing dataset spanning the period from 1981 to 2015 to assess the sensitivity of 23 vegetation types to drought across Spain. Results demonstrate that vegetation activity is controlled largely by the interannual variability of drought. Nevertheless, there are some considerable spatio-temporal variations, which can be linked to differences in land cover and aridity conditions.