Europe's drought called Biblical in proportion water rationed as rivers like this in Spain dry up!
Europe's rivers are running dry. The Rhine is no longer safe for barge traffic. In Italy, Serbia is dredging the Danube water rationing is going on from Denmark to Italy and across Europe a
drought is turning once-great rivers to dry beds and streams. freight, energy and food just as Supply shortages are imminent and people across the continent are gearing up for insane price rises on energy and food. Seemingly overnight Europe is becoming a continent of third world nations.
The cause is one they have been warned about over and over but so few listened with concern, now an unusually dry winter and spring coupled with a summer of record breaking heat waves has caused Europe’s waterways to shrink and overheat. Drought conditions are affecting about 65% of the EU and the U.K., exacerbated by climate-change driven record heat across Europe this summer, according to latest reports from the European Drought Observatory. It has not been this bad for centuries 1540 to be exact. The 1540 drought in Europe was a terrifying event in European history, and can be compared to present-day conditions. Medieval people would have thought it was the coming of hell on Earth, or the work of the devil ”The following is a first hand translation of an eyewitness account.
.In the summer of 1540, the people searched ever more desperately for drinking water. Even a meter and a half under the normal water table in Switzerland was not a drop of water to be found, noted Hans Salat at the time. Spring and upwellings that had never faltered now lay dry. Others were strictly guarded and water was drawn according to a time schedule. Thousands of people along the River Ruhr died of poisoning from dirty water.
“The water level in the Bodensee sank so deep that the island Lindau became connected to the mainland in the summer of 1540. This normally happens only rarely in winter, when waters remains as snow on the mountains, and flows into the lake only later when it melts. “The lake was so small,” said the chroniclers of the time.
Creeks dried up as the water flow became ever smaller. Even large rivers such as the Elbe, Rhine and Seine were so low that people walked across, Then came the fire. The dry soil ignited. Scrub and bush fires blazed over the land and encroached on towns with their traditional timber houses and narrow streets. More communities were destroyed than ever before. For weeks a blanket of smoke shrouded the continent, behind which the sun and moon disappeared as flaming red balls.”
The European Commission’s Joint Research Center warned this week that drought conditions will get worse. Climate change has lessened temperature differences between regions, sapping the forces that drive the jet stream. Observations in recent years have all been at the upper end of what existing climate models predicted. Extreme weather events are becoming more common Climate scientists have advised that Europe will continue experiencing more extreme heat waves and droughts. We need climate action now, or these impacts will only intensify.
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