A research boat will scan the seabed to help search for those missing in Spain's floods

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A Spanish research vessel that investigates marine ecosystems has been abruptly diverted from its usual task to take on a new job: Helping in the increasingly desperate search for the missing from Spain’s floods.

The 24 crew members aboard the Ramón Margalef were preparing Friday to use its sensors and submersible robot to map an offshore area of 36 square kilometers — the equivalent of more than 5,000 soccer fields — to see if they can locate vehicles that last week's catastrophic floods swept into the Mediterranean Sea.

The hope is that a map of sunken vehicles could lead to the recovery of bodies. Nearly 100 people have been officially declared missing, and authorities admit that is likely more people are unaccounted for, in addition to more than 200 declared dead.

Pablo Carrera, the marine biologist leading the mission, estimates that in 10 days his team will be able to hand over useful information to police and emergency services. Without a map, he said, it would be practically impossible for police to carry out an effective and systematic recovery operation to reach vehicles that ended up on the seabed.

“It would be like finding a needle in a haystack," Carrera told The Associated Press by phone.

Many cars became death traps when the tsunami-like flooding hit on Oct. 29.

The boat will join a wider effort by police and soldiers who have expanded their searches for bodies and the missing beyond the devastated towns and streets. Searchers have used poles to probe into layers of mud while sniffer dogs tried to find scent traces of bodies buried in canal banks and fields. They are also looking at beaches that line the coast.

The first area the Ramón Margalef is searching is the stretch of sea off the Albufera wetlands, where at least some of the water ended up after ripping through villages and the southern outskirts of Valencia city.

Spanish state broadcaster said Friday that the body of one woman had been found on the beach after she went missing when the rushing water swept through her town of Pedralba, roughly an hour’s drive from the coast.

Carrera, 60, is head of the fleet of the research vessels run by the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, a government-funded science center under the umbrella of the Spanish National Research Council.

He boarded the Ramón Margalef in Alicante, located on Spain's south coast, from where it will set sail to reach Valencia’s waters before dawn Saturday. The plan is to go straight to work with the 10 scientists and technicians and 14 sailors working non-stop in shifts. The boat also helped research the impact from the lava flow that reached the sea from the 2021 La Palma volcano eruption in Spain's Canary Islands.

Finding a body at sea, Carrera said, is highly unlikely. So the focus is on large objects that shouldn't be there.

The boat’s submersible robot loaded with cameras can dive to a depth of 60 meters to attempt to identify cars. Ideally, they will try to locate license plates, although visibility could be extremely limited and the cars could be smashed to bits or engulfed in the muck, Carrera said.

In the longer term, he said his team will also evaluate the impact of the flood runoff on the marine ecosystem.

Those findings will contribute to initiatives by other Spanish research centers to study Spain's deadliest floods of the century.

Spain is used to the occasional deadly flood produced by autumn storms. But the drought that has hit the country for the past two years and record hot temperatures helped magnify these floods, scientists say.

Spain’s meteorological agency said that the 30.4 inches of rain that fell in one hour in the Valencian town of Turis is an all-time national record.

“We have never seen an autumn storm of this intensity,” Carrera said. “We cannot stop climate change, so we have to prepare for its effects.”

Members of a theatre company sit with their muddy belongings after the floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A house affected by flooding is photographed in Massanassa, Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. The graffiti in Spanish means 'Mazon dimisión' in reference to the president of the Valencia community Carlos Mazon. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Members of the V battalion of the military emergency unit, UME, use a canoe to search the area for bodies washed away by the floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A volunteer walks with a broom over a muddy street in Massanassa, Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Civil Guards walk in a flooded indoor car park to check cars for bodies after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A soldier from the Spanish Parachute Squadron (EZAPAC) launches a drone in the search for bodies after floods in Barranco del Poyo on the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A soldier from the Spanish Parachute Squadron (EZAPAC) searches for bodies after floods in Barranco del Poyo on the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A soldier from the Spanish Parachute Squadron (EZAPAC) operates a drone in the search for bodies after floods in Barranco del Poyo on the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Soldiers from the Spanish Parachute Squadron (EZAPAC) look for bodies after floods in Barranco del Poyo, Spain, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Members of the army, police and volunteers clean the mud after the floods, in Masanasa, Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Members of the army and police walk through streets still awash with mud while clearing debris and cleaning up after the floods in Masanasa, Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Dolores Merchan, 67, looks down on her mud-splattered belongings from the house where she has lived all her life with her husband and three children, and which has been severely affected by the floods in Masanasa, Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Members of the V battalion of the military emergency unit, UME, search the area for bodies washed away by the floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Members of the V battalion of the military emergency unit, UME, search the area for bodies washed away by the floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Members of the fire brigade search the area for bodies washed away by the floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Members of the V battalion of the military emergency unit, UME, use a canoe to search the area for bodies washed away by the floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Extreme weather is contributing to undocumented migration and return between Mexico and the United States, suggesting that more migrants could risk their lives crossing the border as climate change fuels droughts, storms and other hardships, according to a new study.

People from agricultural areas in Mexico were more likely to cross the border illegally after droughts and were less likely to return to their original communities when extreme weather continued, according to research this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Across the globe, climate change — caused by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas — is exacerbating extreme weather. Droughts are longer and drier, heat is deadlier and storms are rapidly intensifying and dumping record-breaking rain.

In Mexico, a country of nearly 130 million people, drought has drained reservoirs dry, created severe water shortages and drastically reduced corn production, threatening livelihoods.

Researchers said Mexico is a notable country for studying the links between migration, return and weather stressors. Its mean annual temperature is projected to increase up to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2060, and extreme weather is likely to economically devastate rural communities dependent on rain-fed agriculture. The U.S. and Mexico also have the largest international migration flow in the world.

Scientists predict migration will grow as the planet gets hotter. Over the next 30 years, 143 million people worldwide are likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes, according to a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

The new migration research comes as Republican Donald Trump was reelected to the U.S. presidency this week. Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and promised mass deportations of an estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally.

Researchers said their findings highlight how extreme weather drives migration.

Filiz Garip, a study researcher and professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, said advanced nations have contributed far more to climate change than developing countries that are bearing the brunt.

Migration “is not a decision that people take up lightly ... and yet they’re being forced to make it more, and they’re being forced to stay longer in the United States” as a result of weather extremes, Garip said.

The researchers analyzed daily weather data along with survey responses from 48,313 people between 1992 and 2018, focusing on about 3,700 individuals who crossed the border without documents for the first time.

They looked at 84 agricultural communities in Mexico where growing corn was dependent on weather. They correlated a person's decision to migrate and then return with abnormal changes in temperature and rainfall in their origin communities during the May-to-August corn growing season.

The study found communities experiencing drought had higher migration rates compared to communities with normal rainfall. And people were less likely to return to Mexico from the U.S. when their communities were unusually dry or wet. That was true for recent U.S. arrivals and people who had been there longer.

People who were better off financially were also more likely to migrate. So were people from communities with established migration histories where friends, neighbors or family members who previously migrated could offer information and help.

These social and economic factors that influence migration are well understood, but Garip said the study's findings underscore the inequities of climate adaptation. With extreme weather events, not everybody is impacted or responds in the same way, she said, "and the typical social and economic advantages or disadvantages also shape how people experience these events.”

For Kerilyn Schewel, codirector of Duke University's Program on Climate, Resilience and Mobility, the economic factors highlight that some of most vulnerable people aren't those displaced by climate extremes, but are rather “trapped in place or lacking the resources to move."

Schewel, who was not involved in the study, said analyzing regions with migration histories could help predict where migrants will come from and who is likelier to migrate because of climate shocks. In “places where people are already leaving, where there’s a high degree of migration prevalence, ... that’s where we can expect more people to leave in the future,” she said.

The survey data used from the Mexican Migration Project makes this study unique, according to Hélène Benveniste, a professor in Stanford University’s department of environmental social sciences. Migration data of its scale that's community specific is “rarely available,” she said in an email. So is information about a person's full migration journey, including their return.

The finding that return migration decisions were delayed by weather stress in origin communities is "important and novel,” said Benveniste, who studies climate-related human migration and was not involved in the study. “Few datasets enable an analysis of this question.”

But increased surveillance and enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border make returning home — and moving back and forth — more difficult, said Michael Méndez, assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. And once undocumented migrants are in the U.S., they often live in dilapidated housing, lack health care or work in industries such as construction or agriculture that make them vulnerable to other climate impacts, he said. Méndez was not involved in the study.

As climate change threatens social, political and economic stability around the world, experts said the study highlights the need for global collaboration around migration and climate resilience.

“So much of our focus has been, in a way, on the border and securing the border,” said Schewel from Duke. “But we need much more attention to not only the reasons why people are leaving, but also the demand for immigrant workers within the U.S."

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

Migrants walk along the Huixtla highway after departing Tapachula, southern Mexico, hoping to reach the country's northern border and ultimately the United States, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Migrants who are part of a caravan gather at Bicentenario Plaza in Tapachula, Mexico, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, the night before departing by foot toward the U.S. border. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Migrants line up to present to U.S. agents documents requesting appointment to apply for asylum at the Paso del Norte international bridge, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Tuesday Nov 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)