Droughts in Europe

www.reuters.com...

Italy on Monday declared a state of emergency for areas surrounding the river Po, which accounts for roughly a third of the country's agricultural production and is suffering its worst drought for 70 years.

The government decree will allow authorities to cut through red tape and take action immediately if they think it necessary, such as to impose water rationing for homes and businesses.

The Po is Italy's longest river which runs for more than 650 km (400 miles) through the wealthy north of Italy. However, many stretches of the waterway have run dry and farmers say the flow is so weak that sea water is seeping inland, destroying crops.

www.bbc.com...

"What we do is look at the long-term supply and challenges for the future as we need to reduce the water we take from the environment.

"In the East we're seeing a change in weather conditions. We have less water available as well as seeing growth [in population].

"We must be more robust towards drought."

joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu...

The drought in much of Europe is critical as the winter-spring precipitation deficit (19% of the 1991-2020 average across all warning areas in EU+UK, and 22% in areas under drought alert) was exacerbated by early heatwaves. River discharge in multiple countries is severely affected, withstored water volumes also depleted. Altogether, this may require extraordinary water and energy management measures to be taken in affected countries.

The lack of precipitation means soil water content has reduced significantly. This has made it harder for plants to extract water from the soil, leading to widespread stress on vegetation — namely in the Italian lowlands, in southern, central and western France, in central Germany and eastern Hungary, Portugal and in northern Spain.

not being widely reported I think
I wonder at what point do we have serious food issues from this? not to mention drinking water

anyone with specific knowledge of?

a reply to: ElGoobero

all i know is spain also lost alot of forest to these fires couple thousand square miles i dont think it will effect the food prices very much we have the goverment for that

a reply to: ElGoobero

There is also an economic disincentive for farmers to produce food. Texas and California are in bad drought conditions as well. At this rate, if reports are correct, food rationing will have to be introduced at some stage with regard to staples. The Dutch farmers have had it, ditto Ukraine, supplies from Russia sanctioned away. India not exporting wheat. If you can plant some spuds in fast it might be the best idea.

This is strange. If the narrative is that the world is warming, the. Surely there should be more evaporation from the oceans. How can we have a heating up but less evaporation? The two go hand in hand. Someone, somewhere, is getting an awful lot of rain.

a reply to: ElGoobero

A couple of weeks ago, during the fires helped by the hot weather in Portugal, some of the airplanes and helicopters fighting the fires had trouble finding enough water on some of the rivers and lakes that would usually supply them with water.

One of the main dams in Portugal is only at around 50% capacity.

a reply to: ARM1968

We have more evaporation from the ground too, and less frequent but stronger rains, that do not allow the ground to absorb the water in the same way as more frequent, milder rains.

This has been happening for decades, but is starting to become more obvious.

Rivers in Europe have dried up before.

While concerning...it's nothing new

realclimatescience.com...

why can't we just vacuum up the clouds where needed?

with a big upright.

nobody gets out of here alive anyway.

or even dead as per another thread.

a reply to: ElGoobero

Was in an aircraft over southern France and northern Italy recently.

It looked bad from above. One could see the river valleys -- but they were brown with little water to be seen.

Cheers

In Hungary, two lakes almost disappeared from lack of rain.

I tried to find an English version of this news, but I could not, so here's a Google translation of the article.

Global warming causes drought of two lakes in Hungary

PS: it's not the first time I watch something on Euronews for which I cannot find an English version. Curious.