BRUSSELS: With certain areas of Southern Europe already experiencing water shortages and farmers anticipating their lowest crop harvests in decades, the continent is bracing for a summer of fierce drought.
Years of constant drought have drained groundwater supplies as climate change makes the land hotter and drier. The soils have dried to the bone in southern France, Italy, and Spain. The hydroelectric output this summer is facing jeopardy due to low river and reservoir levels.
After last year’s hottest summer on record, which fueled a drought that academics from the European Union said was the worst in at least 500 years, scientists are now warning that Europe is on course for another terrible summer.
The situation is most severe in Spain so far this year.
Professor of spatial analysis at the University of Alicante in Spain, Jorge Olcina, predicted that the drought situation will get worse this summer.
Rainfall currently has little possibility of resolving the underlying drought, either. The few storms that can occur at this time of year are brief and localised, and they won’t make up for the lack of rainfall, according to Olcina.
According to a letter sent to the European Commission (EC) on April 24 and obtained by Reuters, Spain’s Agriculture Minister Luis Planas requested urgent EU assistance, warning that “the situation resulting from this drought is of such magnitude that its consequences cannot be tackled with national funds alone.”
CLIMATE CHANGE TREND
This year, severe water shortages are affecting most of Europe, not just Southern Europe. While a catastrophic drought in Argentina has devastated soy and maize harvests, the Horn of Africa is currently experiencing its worst drought in decades.
The Mediterranean area, where the average temperature is currently 1.5C higher than it was 150 years ago, is seeing more frequent and severe droughts, which is in accordance with what scientists have predicted will happen there as a result of climate change.
Professor of Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle University Hayley Fowler stated, “In terms of the climate change signal, it very much fits with what we’re expecting.”
Despite these long-held forecasts, preparation is lagging. Many farming regions have not adopted water-saving methods like precision irrigation or switched to more drought-hardy crops, such as sunflowers.
“Governments are late. Companies are late,” said Robert Vautard, a climate scientist and France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute director. “Some companies are not even thinking of changing the model of their consumption, they are just trying to find some miraculous technologies that would bring water.”
According to the official website Propluvia, France is coming out of its driest winter since 1959, with drought “crisis” warnings already issued in four departmental prefects, prohibiting non-priority water withdrawals, including for agriculture.
Portugal is also dealing with an early onset of drought. Nearly five times the area recorded a year earlier, 90% of the mainland is experiencing drought, with one-fifth of the country experiencing severe drought.
Thousands of people in Spain are reliant on truck supplies for drinking water, and areas including Catalonia have imposed water restrictions. Spain had less than half of its usual rainfall through April of this year.
Some farmers have already reported crop losses as high as 80 per cent, with cereals and oilseeds among those affected, farming groups have said.
