Keeping Madrid livable and investable under extreme heat
Heat is no longer a seasonal nuisance; it is a systemic and sovereign risk to the value of cities like Madrid which no actor, balance sheet, or project can tackle on its own.
Our long-term goal is to co-design and set up a new governance and collective intelligence infrastructure, along with new financial arrangements and accountability systems to enable multi-actor initiatives that are adequate in speed and scale to protect Madrid’s value at risk from the cascading impacts of extreme heat, as a proxy for a changing climate.
A Dark Matter Labs initiative · Seeded by xCO (Expanding Civilization Optionality)
The Challenge
Madrid is heading towards a Estimate combining regional high-emissions temperature projections for Madrid (+5.2–5.5°C rise in P95 max temperature by 2041–2070, vs. the 1971–2000 baseline; Kotz et al. 2024, AEMET) with the added local effect of the urban heat island (+2–5°C; ERA5/CMIP6). future
Rising temperatures put the city's future liveability and prosperity at risk. Extreme heat cascades through Madrid: from stressed infrastructure to whole-sector failures, and on into social and economic disruption.
87days/yr
Days per year hotter than Madrid's historical extremes, projected by 2050 (SSP5-8.5)
Source: AdapteCCa (AEMET) regional climate model ensemble — visor.adaptecca.es
~65 → 94
Tropical nights (>20°C) per year in Madrid, projected by 2050. Roughly two to three months a year where the body cannot cool overnight.
Source: AdapteCCa (AEMET) regional climate model ensemble — visor.adaptecca.es
3.5M+
Residents to keep safe, in a region adding roughly 1 million more people over the next 15 years
Source: Comunidad de Madrid open data — gestiona.comunidad.madrid
−16.4%
Projected loss in GDP per capita for the Community of Madrid by 2050, from extreme heat alone
Source: AXA Climate — Madrid roadshow presentation
