The Loire River runs entirely within France. It is the country’s longest river. It originates in the Ardès region in the southeast of Mount “Lomassive Central” and flows into the Gulf of Gasconia in the Atlantic Ocean in the west of the country. The central part of its valley was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites about a quarter ago. Qarn, an area characterized by the spread of vineyards and famous palaces built in the Renaissance, earned the river its famous name "Royal River".

The Loire has very diverse and profound tales that extend throughout the pages of French history, but a new tale has been recently added to it that is perhaps the most terrifying, as people are now able, in some areas, to cross the great river on foot (1).

Worst in 500 years

An aerial view shows a branch of the Loire River as the historic drought hits France (Reuters)

It is drought has arrived, and the matter does not stop with France alone, as the level of the Rhine River, for example, which passes through Switzerland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, has decreased.

In Italy, a state of emergency was declared last July, after dozens of cows died due to drought, after the north of the country was affected by a heat wave, which caused the drying of important rivers such as the Po, the longest river in Italy, whose water levels fell two meters below the normal rate. With the cessation of rain in the region since last November. (2)

Spain and Portugal also declared a state of emergency due to drought, and in Britain July was the driest month in England since 1935, and for some regions it was the driest since records began in 1836. It also reached Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, as if it were an invasion It engulfs all of Europe.

In fact, the European Commission's Joint Research Center (EC-JRC) warned a few days ago that the current drought in Europe could be the worst in 500 years (3) and predicted that the severe drought in Europe will likely reach half of The whole continent, and worse, it will not stop soon, but may continue for several months to come.

The last winter and spring were unusually dry in Europe, followed by a “scorching” summer to say the least, as a group of European countries witnessed harsh temperatures, in successive strikes without stopping since May, to the point that they outperformed us in the Arab world. In the south, this was accompanied by no heavy rainfall for nearly two months across western, central and southern Europe, and the worst is that the outlook for the near future does not bode well, which prompted experts to treat the current drought as the worst on the continent in five centuries.

blow to the economy

Guadalbiral dolmen, also known as Spanish Stonehenge, is seen as the waters recede in the Valdecanas Reservoir on the outskirts of El Gordo, Spain, August 3, 2022. (Reuters)

Because of that wave of drought, interesting news spread on social media about new discoveries that emerged from under the receding European waters. With the drying up of rivers and lakes, a huge bomb appeared in Italy that has yet to explode from the remnants of the Second World War near the city of Mantua, and next to a dry dam Near Barcelona in Spain, the Roman church, which dates back to the 9th century, re-emerged from under the waters of the river, and a prehistoric stone circle appeared that they called the "Spanish Stonehenge" in the central province of Caceres (4).

But no one realized that the effect of drying up rivers extends much deeper than that.

For example, corn and rice production has been clearly affected in France, which is also facing a new problem of its kind, as river water cools nuclear plants that produce 70% of the country’s electricity, and with the water levels in those rivers dropping, and the water temperature rising, it faces These stations will reduce their production capacity. (5)

Just over 1,000 kilometers away in Germany, the Rhine is a major shipping artery, flowing from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea via Germany carrying everything from grain to chemicals.

The drop in its water level has led to a partial halt in shipping operations, so that one shipment is now divided into two or three ships, which has led to a lot of delays and consequently high costs and a new wave of high prices in circumstances where prices are already high.

On the other hand, the drop in the river’s water level has reduced hydropower generation rates by 44% in Spain, as well as in Norway, which relies on hydropower to provide 90% of its electricity, prompting Oslo to confirm that the unusually low levels of its reservoirs water may eventually obligate them to reduce energy exports. (6)

Accused number one

At that point, you may ask about the reason for all this, and here we will return to the primary stage, where we learned in the Book of Science that the water on Earth has a clear and constant cycle, starting with the evaporation of water and then traveling with the clouds and falling again, but with global climate warming, greater quantities of water evaporate Water from the rivers, the soil, and from the plants themselves grown in this soil, causing them to dry out faster.

Besides, the air's ability to hold that water increases due to the heat.

In general, the air can retain about 7% more moisture for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature, so when the planet is warmer by 2 degrees Celsius, for example, compared to the pre-industrial era, the air’s ability to hold water vapor will double by 14 %, which in turn means a water loss equivalent to this percentage.

On the other hand, the disturbance in the climate system due to global warming creates a disturbance in the rain system around the world, this effect appears in a very diverse way, meaning that it reshapes the distributions of rain in almost all the planet, so you will find that some regions will receive excessive amounts of rain in an extreme in The form of harsh rain waves, and you may think - at first glance - that this may be beneficial for the areas in which it occurs, but it is not. Let us at that point consider Yemen, which, due to its geographical location, may be exposed to more rain as a result of the rise in the average temperature of the planet.

Those rainy extremes cause severe storms and flash floods, for example: in 2008, torrential rains caused losses estimated at $2 billion, equivalent to about 6% of the country's GDP.

Climate change does not only increase drought rates, but also the severity of droughts, and the length of each wave (Reuters)

On the other hand, other regions will witness a clear decrease in the amount of rain, and this is what happens with the mountains that make the waters of European rivers, where snow falls in the winter, and then melts in the spring to release water in the arteries of the earth, but now we know that the amounts of snow decrease little by little with that areas due to rising temperatures, which reduces the amount of water entering these rivers.

In addition, the effects of severe droughts, due to global warming, also affect the soil, reducing its ability to bear water, which may cause floods (because it does not absorb water but only passes it), as well as raise its salinity, leading to desertification, especially in areas Which rates of desertification are high from the ground up.

In a 2020 study in the prestigious journal Science (7), researchers note how human-caused climate change is contributing to the massive drought already occurring in the 21st century in the western United States and northern Mexico.

According to the August 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (8), scientists have high confidence that for every half-degree Celsius rise in atmospheric temperature, there will be significant increases in drought rates globally, especially in the United States of America. .

The report also notes that extreme environmental and agricultural drought events that once occurred every 10 years are now 1.7 times more likely than they were between 1850-1900 (more than a century ago). Climate does not only increase the rates of drought, but also the intensity of drought waves, and the length of each wave, and this is evident in the current European case in particular.

drier future

But the real problem is not in the present, but in the future, which scientists look at with a look filled with horror. In a study conducted by the University of Cambridge (9) last year, it was stated that summer droughts in Europe since 2015 were more severe than any other period in the past 2,100 years. (Look at the number!).

The study, published in the prestigious journal Nature, reconstructs summer weather over all that period by analyzing rings of live and dead oak trees in the modern Czech Republic and southern Germany, confirming that "human-caused climate change" was likely the main culprit.

But climate change does not stop, and what is worse is that it has already affected us and there is no way to undo its strikes for more than half a century, and this is if we decide now to stop the political debate and start an open global dialogue in which everyone agrees on the same thing, but as you notice, the exact opposite It is what is happening, the world has entered into a series of political turmoil that suggests that we are far from being agreed.

In this context, many studies (10, 11) expect that climate change will gradually increase the rates, intensity and length of droughts during the current century, and the results indicate large “critical areas” in which significant drought-related changes are expected, especially in southern and southeastern Europe. .

In those regions, once-in-100-year droughts may be less frequent, occurring only once every 10-50 years. Overall, scientists tend to agree on one thing: droughts are likely to become more severe in the 1950s and beyond.

A study conducted by NASA (12) had warned of a similar future, when it indicated that the probability of major droughts - each lasting 10 years or more - will rise from 12% currently to more than 60% by the end of the century.

Based on all these expectations, another study in the journal Nature (13) indicated that annual drought losses in the European Union and the United Kingdom will rise to more than 65 billion euros annually, compared to 9 billion euros annually, especially in the southern and western parts of Europe. Drought conditions can reduce regional agricultural economic output by 10%.

Well, this was expected for decades, but the political debate continued anyway, what got us to this point, some in Europe and the United States thought that climate change would not last them, and then here he is reaching out to mess with all parts of the world, and research in this area indicates that The future is worse, and we have not yet talked about the impact of the climate on the economy, politics, the development of wars, revolutions, and security in every country, literally every country in this world, without exception.

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Sources

1- France's river Loire sets new lows as drought dries up its tributaries

2- 'We worry about it disappearing': alarm grows over Italy's drought-hit Po River

3- Europe's drought could be the worst in 500 years, warns researcher

4- In pictures: Drought in Europe exposes sunken ships, lost villages and ominous hunger stones'

5- 5 unexpected impacts of drought in Europe

6- Europe's rivers run dry as scientists warn drought could be worst in 500 years

7- Large contribution from anthropogenic warming to an emerging North American megadrought

8- Key takeaways from the new IPCC report

9- Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability

10- Estimating the Impact of Global Change on Flood and Drought Risks in Europe: A Continental, Integrated Analysis

11- Will drought events become more frequent and severe in Europe?

12- Megadroughts in US West Projected to be Worst of the Millennium

13- Increased economic drought impacts in Europe with anthropogenic warming