Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

Just took a train ride from Vienna to Budapest for a few days, and couldn’t help but notice how very, very dry everything is .. as an Australian living in Europe for a few decades now, I’ve always been intrigued by just how green everything is, literally something growing in every single crack in the pavement, or endless rolling green fields of prosperity during spring - whereas, where I’m from its year-long spinifex and grass shrubs and wattles with the occasional bush flower bloom, barely hanging on out in the desert, mostly reds and blacks and greys, not much green - so the vibrancy of European fields and the abundant diversity of countryside flora have always been pleasant to my eyes ..

During this trip, I was kind of shocked that things felt a bit more Australian to my eyes .. the grasses are dry and barren, the beautiful city parks of both Budapest and Vienna dustier than usual, the Danube water level definitely noticeably lower than I remember ever seeing.

I’ve long been encouraging my European friends to not take the abundance of growth for granted, and now we see it in the environment, plain and clear: the worlds’ weather is changing.

A week of sweltering heat is predicted for us again in Vienna, and as we get started on September and then October so close, two thoughts are on my mind: use this opportunity to go for more dips in the Danube, and .. I wonder what the floods of late-autumn will bring, because .. inevitably .. this super dry summer means there will be heavier rains in October. Might be we look back in a month or two and wish we had this dry heat back again, who knows ..

Either way, neither city is particularly comfortable in the heat. A hundred or so years ago, the heat retention was a feature. Now it’s a bug.

AMOC collapse [0] is Europe's potential big climate challenge. Nasty business. I wonder how to help prevent that from happening.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...

But at least we can talk to search engines now

The timing of this article is a bit unfortunate. It's been raining here (France) every day for the past week, sometimes heavily.

Europe is caught in a dilemma: tourism, air travel, and city hopping are its economic lifeblood that keeps the continent running, but these also cause the greatest damage to the environment.

Since they can't fix the real problem are trying to go "green" in counterproductive ways that make things worse: blowing up nuclear plants or taxing cow fart.

I must depend on the country because the trend is that some countries, the UK for instance, are receiving more rain as climate warms, but it is becoming more seasonal. This year winter was extremely wet then indeed summer has been a record dry, so not sure how the year will look like overall (plus it's a strong El Niño year).

Just a friendly reminder that Fortune has been owned since 2018 by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon, a member of the Chearavanont family that controls the CP Group conglomerate. CP Group created Siam Land Flying in 1991 as its in-house flight department for executives. It later added charter (Executive Wings) and air-ambulance services and still operates King Air 350 and Hawker jets.

These owners don't care about any of your feelings on climate change.

Just came back from a bike tour through rural Bavaria, it's insane how dusty everything is - and that despite a short but intense rain today night. The farmers around here are pretty much screwed this season, and not just the crop farmers but the cattle farmers as well, as they have to buy lots of feed now that they'd only have to buy in winter.

Atmospheric injections of Sulphur is going to be the only answer.

paywall

Who is liable for the deaths caused by extreme weather patterns? Is anyone?

Complete nonsense. Even climate chance won't change the amount of rainfall we get over the course of the year. In fact, it will most likely be wetter due to it.

But it will become more uneven, with droughts followed by torrential rains and floods. We simply need to adapt by creating underground water basins that store torrential rainfall preventing floods and also serve as buffers for when the drought comes.

I do believe places like Spain could see more desertification, though. But they were at the brink for centuries in any case, especially inland.

Droughts are scary and they suck badly. California went through one for 10+ years. However, don’t go off the deep end and think that it’s the “new normal” like Californians did at one point.

All it took was one big rainfall a few years ago, and California has been out of drought ever since then. The reservoirs have been above historic norms and at the end of this summer, it’s only “abnormally dry”. Compare that to a few years ago where the entire state was mostly in an exceptional level of drought.

Droughts and heat waves suck and many people are suffering but nature goes in cycles and it will get better.