Nearly half of the land in the European Union is currently under a drought warning or more severe ‘alert’ level, hampering agriculture, energy production and water supplies. water, confirmed the European Commission.
From France in the east and from Romania in the west, to western Germany and southern Greece, a “broad and persistent” lack of rain, combined with heat waves, is a alarming list of countries with worsening drought.
New data from the European Drought Observatory (EDO) shows that around 45% of the bloc’s territory is in “alert” conditions, the second of three drought categories, in the ten days to 20 July.
Meanwhile, 15% of the land has moved to the most serious “alert” state, which means not only that the land is drying up after light rains, but that plants and crops are also damaged.
The figures show little improvement on the previous ten-day period, which saw 46% of land at “warning” level with dry soil and 13% in “alert” territory.
New forecasts of dry weather for many countries in August and September “add concerns to the already very critical situation and, if confirmed, will exacerbate the severity of the drought and the impacts on agriculture, energy and l water supply,” EDO warned in July.
Crisis team
France’s worst drought on record has left parched villages without clean water, with farmers warning of a winter milk shortage and maize harvests set to be 18.5% lower than last year.
On Friday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s office set up a crisis team, as the country prepared for its fourth heat wave of the summer.
“Widespread stress on vegetation” has hit the Italian lowlands, much of France, central Germany, eastern Hungary, Portugal and northern Spain, the report said. EDO, just like Europeans, are grappling with higher food prices as a result of the war in Ukraine.
Farmers in Tuscany, the heart of Italy’s wine and olive oil industry, are fighting to save as much as they can from
this year’s harvest from the ravages of the drought and the heat wave.
Professor David Hill, former vice-chairman of Natural England, said intensive farming practices have made droughts worse by making the soil less able to hold water and therefore more easily dried out or washed away.
“Where you have large-scale agricultural intensification, you end up with simple ecosystems that cannot withstand shocks,” he told Sky News. “Massive trusses are much less resilient to environmental change than a patchwork of different types.”
Energy production affected
Russia’s latest invasion of its neighbor and the disruption of European gas supplies have also sent energy prices skyrocketing and left countries looking to tap into local energy.
But low river levels and rising water temperatures have also hampered power generation in some areas.
Water shortages have reduced Italy’s hydropower output, with the energy potential stored in water reserves stuck at about half the level of recent years. Water levels in reservoirs for hydropower are falling in nine countries, including Serbia, Montenegro and Norway.
Nuclear operator EDF cut power generation at a power plant in southwestern France last week due to high temperatures in the Garonne river, with half of its 56 reactors already out of service due to maintenance or corrosion issues.
Spain’s dry weather is fueling wildfires like this blaze in Verin last week. Photo: Felipe Carnotto via Reuters
A World War II bomb was discovered in the dry bed of the Po River
Arid Spain now has “extremely favourable” conditions for wildfires, while wildfire risk is high to extreme across most of Portugal.
Climate degradation makes drought in the Mediterranean more severe and more likely, although it is not responsible for all droughts.
The causes of drought are complex, but climate change affects it in two main ways. It concentrates rainfall into shorter, more intense bursts, making it harder to hold back.
Warmer temperatures evaporate more water – and heat waves, which are “unilaterally” linked to global warming, are also driving up demand as people seek cooling.
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