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Europe is Bracing For (Another) Devastating Drought (wired.co.uk) 74

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
After unusually low amounts of rain and snow this winter, the continent faces a severe water shortage. From a report: What happens during the next few months will really matter. Abundant rainfall could ease the situation and stave off the worst-case scenario. But Europe needs a lot. "We're talking about a sea, a sea's worth of water," says Hannah Cloke at the University of Reading in the UK. In terms of volume, hundreds of millions of cubic liters of rain would have to fall across the continent to fill the deficit, she estimates. It would have to amount to higher-than-average rainfall for France and certain other places, including parts of the UK. The chances of that are, unfortunately, not high.

The UK's weather agency, the Met Office, estimates there's a 10 percent chance of a wetter-than-average March, April, and May. Conversely, there's a 30 percent chance that this period will be drier than average -- and that is 1.5 times the normal chance at this time of year. The Met Office stresses that this is a "broad outlook," and there might still be patches of very wet weather even if it remains dry overall. Any rain that does fall also has to fall in the right way and in the right places. "There's always this chance that if we do get it all in two days, we see some very serious floods," says Cloke. "What we want is to see sustained, reasonably gentle rain over the next few months." Another important factor is how hot it gets this summer, says Cammalleri. Heat waves push up water consumption and increase evaporation rates. He indicates that European forecasts do not suggest that temperatures will be quite as blisteringly hot as last year -- though there is some uncertainty there too.
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Europe is Bracing For (Another) Devastating Drought More

Europe is Bracing For (Another) Devastating Drought

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  • Cubic liters? Oh, boy, that's serious.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      But how many elongated dodecahedron liters?

      What's that in Danzigs?

    • A cubic liter of gardyloo is an especially serious matter.

    • Cubic liters is how you measure volume.

      What do Americans use? Libraries of Congresses? Football fields? I don't really keep up with all the Usian nonsense I'm afraid.

      • I'm pretty sure I read somewhere they measure water volume in acre-feet, which is a hilarious unit.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        I think his point is that "cubic liter" is nonsensical--"liter" is already a unit of volume. By the way, "Football fields" would be a measure of area (and, ironically, a US football field is actually a standard size as opposed to a soccer pitch which is variable) while traditionally a "library of congress" would be a measure of data capacity (or, more antiquated, linear shelf space when speaking of books) so your snark is wasted.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by k0t0n ( 7251482 )
          In this case, the most appropriate unit would be swimming pools (olympic size)

      • Re: Units (Score:5, Informative)

        by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @05:34PM (#63442470)

        Um, no.
        A liter is a liter, be it spherical, cubic or pretty much any three-dimensional shape you could think of. It's always going to represent the same volume. It's equal to 1,000 cubic centimeters.
        I assume TFS was referring to "cubic meters", but since Slashdot is USA-centric, msmash's grasp of metric system is as approximate as one would expect. Therefore... the mighty cubic liter was born!

        • I assume TFS was referring to "cubic meters", but since Slashdot is USA-centric, msmash's grasp of metric system is as approximate as one would expect. Therefore... the mighty cubic liter was born!

          May I salute your failure to read the article in the great tradition of our site. Unfortunately for our battle to blame the editors, the term "cubic litres" a measure of 6 -dimensional hyper-volume comes from the article in Wired. The scientist reported on does given an actual measure of volume though - "a sea’s worth of water". That leads to the the question, "which is the standard sea?", the correct answer being the North sea. That means that, to solve the problem in Europe we need 54,000 cubic kilo

          • May I salute your failure to read the article in the great tradition of our site.

            I am not interested enough by the subject to go ahead and read the article.
            However, if the mistake is in the article, then it's even worse for our esteemed editors.
            Instead of making a rather excusable, if stupid, mistake, it means they just copy/pasted some content without even understanding it.
            If I were a Slashdot editor, I'd be REALLY worried about ChatGPT.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SpzToid ( 869795 )
          Fun fact: One liter of water weighs one kilogram.

          • At which temperature and pressure?
            Because it matters, very much.

            • At which temperature and pressure?
              Because it matters, very much.

              Pressure matters not at all. Liquids are incompressible. 1 kg of water is 1 liter at water's maximal density, around 4 degrees C.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )

        Cubic liters is how you measure volume.

        No, it is not. Volumes can be measured in units of liters, one of which is the same as one cubic decimeter or 1000 cubic centimeters or 0.001 cubic meters.

        A "cubic liter" would be a nine-dimensional volume... maybe string-theorists dream about such nonsense.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          but think of the clickibaity value! go away, you insensitive clod, along with your rationality!

          in other words: nothing to see here, just regular newspeak. which is just a mirror of the average literacy level, which is kept at that bar for a very good reason.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Cubic liters is how you measure volume.

        Ok, I'm genuinely confused. Isn't it just "liter"? How many liters are in a cubic liter? Or are you being sarcastic, and I'm just a gullible idiot?

        I don't really keep up with all the Usian nonsense I'm afraid.

        We don't either. For large quantities it's usually acre-feet. For smaller quantities, take your pick, ounces, quarts, gallons, liters.

      • What do Americans use? Libraries of Congresses?

        Only Americans use "liters" everyone else uses "litres". Litres are a measure of volume and therefore have dimensions of length-cubed. Cubic litres, therefore, have dimensions of length to the power 9. Hence, the evidence suggests that this "UK" researcher is actually an American from the 9th dimension.

    • Cubic liters? Oh, boy, that's serious.

      Indeed, someone at the University of Reading should know that the English spelling is "litre". Clearly, she must be an invader from the 9th dimension.

    • To be clear, someone pointed out below that the linked article does not include the words "cubic liters", only "liters".

      THE NONSENSE WORD "CUBIC" WAS ADDED BY THE SLASHDOT EDITOR MSMASH !

      ( Quite apart from "hundreds of millions of cubic (sic) liters" being several orders of magnitude less than a sea's volume. )
  • When I hear the word "drought", I think of news I saw as a child, showing scorched landscapes that have not seen any rain in many months or even years. But lately, media seems to use that word for any period with somewhat less than average precipitation. And Europe is big enough that you will find regions that received less than their average rain, for every year. When I look at recent precipitation statistics for Germany [wetterkontor.de], the word "drought" would never occur to me to describe the situation. But yes, many r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      Modern news has been driven by the "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra for decades, at least as long as I can remember. The only difference that I see in recent times is the threshold for "bleeds", it seems much lower now than I ever recall. "Local man gets hangnail, pope refuses to comment"

      • That doesn't mean you ignore the facts before you. Sure, not all that bleeds should lead, but the drought in Europe is a serious, dire matter.

    • If there is sufficiently little water that the government needs to ask people to stop watering their garden, it's a drought.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        As I understand it, there's a bit of misleadingness to the term "drought". A drought isn't over until all of the "missed" rain from the past has caught up. You can be in a period of several years of average rain and lush gardens, but if you're short from 5 years ago, you're still considered to be in a drought.

    • Re:What's their definition of a "drought"? (Score:5, Informative)

      by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @05:19PM (#63442418)

      I know this is slashdot and all but you could RTFA:

      "He estimates that reservoirs in France and northern Italy are about 40 to 50 percent lower than they should be. The longest river in Italy, the Po, is 60 percent below its normal levels. Not only that, there is roughly half the usual snow on the Alps than would be expected for this time of year. That’s a huge problem, because much of Central Europe relies on meltwater from these famous mountains every spring. “The Alps are known as the water towers of Europe for a reason,” says Cammalleri.

      France has just experienced its driest winter for 60 years. In some places, you can find extreme examples of how people have been affected. Take the village of Coucouron in the south of the country, where a truck has had to deliver drinking water up to 10 times a day since July—without any hiatus during the supposedly wetter months."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )

        https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/e... [europa.eu]

        Interesting link... so my impression was right: There are hardly any "red spots" on their map in Europe, and even the red spots would only mean "Alert: Vegetation stress following soil moisture and vegetation deficit" - which is still not quite a "scorched earth, nothing grows" scenario.

        • I suppose if you happen to live in a "red spot" then you feel differently.

        • Re:What's their definition of a "drought"? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @08:36PM (#63442802) Journal
          Achhh, that idiotic stereotype has nothing to do with the matter at hand. When freight can't pass through the Rhein because the water level is too low, then billions of Euros are lost. This actually happened last summer. If farmers don't get their water allocations, as many did not in California the past few years, billions of dollars are lost and the food supply is affected. You need to be more sophisticated. Cliches have nothing to do with the intricate details of advanced capitalism. Here is another example, another contributor to the global chip supply shortage of last year was the fact that drought in Singapore had taken a couple of fabs offline becuase they were denied water. Drought doesn't manifest itself in simple stereotypes.

          • Here is another example, another contributor to the global chip supply shortage of last year was the fact that drought in Singapore had taken a couple of fabs offline becuase they were denied water. Drought doesn't manifest itself in simple stereotypes.

            You sure about Singapore having a drought last year? I kind of doubt it, since I was in Singapore for pretty much the whole of 2022, and there was zero concern about water.

            I know Taiwan had some drought issues in 2021, which may have affected fabs, but not too sure as I understand they were using water trucks to bring water to the affected fabs.

            https://www.forbes.com/sites/e... [forbes.com]

            It does seem that Taiwan is preparing for water shortage again later this year.
            https://asia.nikkei.com/Busine... [nikkei.com]

            • Some very reliable sources at our own fab were saying that last year.

              • Interesting.

                Am not in the semi con industry, but I am in Singapore currently. I did ask around, and noone seems to be aware of any water shortage (at least publicly) last year.

                I did check up on google again, and it seems UMC is planning to build a fab (they decided last year) in Singapore.
                https://www.straitstimes.com/b... [straitstimes.com]

                And just a month ago there seems to be discussion with TSMC to build a fab in Singapore, with supposedly a bunch of freebies thrown in, including land, electricity, water, etc (am guessing

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          There is a link to drought reports on that page. If you go to it and download the .pdf for Europe March 2023 you will find descriptions of substantial anomalies of low soil moisture, low river flows, and low snow packs in the mountains, in addition to things like:

          Dry conditions associated with potential impacts on water resources availability are emerging in wide areas of western and north-western Europe and several smaller areas in southern Europe. These late winter conditions are similar to the ones of 2022 wich led to severe-to-extreme drought and impacts later in that year.

          The Combined Drought Indicator (CDI) at the end of February 2023 shows widespread warning conditions for drought in southern Spain, France, Ireland, the United Kingdom, northern Italy, Switzerland, most Mediterranean island, the Black Sea regions of Romania and Bulgaria, and Greece (Fig. 1)

          and

          Seasonal forecast show a warmer than average spring over Europe, while precipitation forecasts are characterized by higher spatial variability and uncertainty. Close monitoring and proper water us plans are required to deal with a season that currently has high risk of that currently has a high risk of being critical for water resources.

          So it's a warning that the drought conditions of last year will probably repeat or maybe get worse.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        Seems like northern African and Asia Minor seem to be having a much bigger problem.

    • There were several villages (~100) in France last year that had no running water [translate.goog]. They had to receive drinking water through tankers.

      I happen to know a couple living in one of those villages, with 2 kids. It really was a shock to not be able to turn the faucet and see running water, for the first time in their life. In previous years, there were restrictions, like the town council asking people not to water their garden, or to clean their car, or to refill their pool. A lot of people were not taking it seri

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      But lately, media seems to use that word for any period with somewhat less than average precipitation.

      easy: it's not the landscape, it's always the people: drought means it doesn't rain/flow enough to satisfy the peak people's consumption in the next [arbitrary time period] in the area, so restrictions are projected to apply by [arbitrary time period] unless a solution is found and btw innovative proposals are welcome. not excluding migration, i guess, and although that's not really innovative, it is certainly disrupting. (just kidding)

    • Capetown was within a week of running out of water a couple years ago. The point is to avoid that fate. Weather patterns are changing. Bureaucrats cannot assume that past precipitation patterns will hold. So, they need to err on the side of caution. The desertification of Spain continues. The Rhein was impassable in many places due to low water levels last summer. (So was the Mississippi.) If you don't let enough water flow through the rivers, commerce comes to a halt. You are not taking the situation as se

    • But yes, many regions could probably benefit from building more water reservoirs to collect rain when it falls in abundance,

      I honestly don't know if water reservoirs are good, bad or a necessary tradeoff but green activists are already on it so it will never happen. I don't know if they are right but considering what they did to nuclear they can't be taken seriously anymore.

      • Capturing rain water prevents that water from replenishing the groundwater, as well as eventually missing downstream. From what I hear, retention reservoirs are already causing downstream issues in Spain. Even in the USA collecting rainwater is limited in some areas (cf Colorado limiting retention capacity to 110 galons [1])

        Now more details: I can only speak for France, as that is the only area where I have at least some insight:

        The reservoirs (bassines) being built are allowed to also be filled up using pu

    • You're confusing arid landscape with drought.
      Arid landscape is the consequence of prolonged drought, while drought itself is a deficit of water compared to the very recent past.

      On another note, if you take a look at satellite pictures of Europe during a heatwave, your scorched landscape picture sort of pops up [1] [2]
      The best reservoir is groundwater, on average its not replenishing, and we're still pumping. Once the ground sinks into the space the ground water was, the reservoir's capacity decreases, forev

  • I get with oil there's money to be made, but there's never a systemic look at water pipelines. It's so fucking stupid. Water makes money. You send it where it's dry and hot, plants LOVE it. They grow, and it doesn't even have to be freshwater. The Salton sink is one of those below sea level places where if you just piped freshwater in, you could power turbines. Inland sea for saltwater fish. Wildlife habitat. Algae harvesting for biodiesel. Overall cooling of the Imperial valley through evaporation.

  • 100s of millions of "cubic" liters = 1 Sea (Score:3)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @05:22PM (#63442420)
    "We're talking about a sea, a sea's worth of water," says Hannah Cloke at the University of Reading in the UK. In terms of volume, hundreds of millions of cubic liters of rain would have to fall across the continent to fill the deficit, she estimates.

    So Hannah thinks a sea is, let's be generous, a billion "cubic" liters of water ?
    So is she stupid or is it the author ?

    Or maybe a cubic liter is much bigger than a normal liter ?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It would have 9 dimensions so who's to say what crazy properties the mystical cubic litre might have!

    • If you RTFA, the word "cubic" nowhere appears. It must be a poor transcription on the part of the editors.
      • Well spotted!

        The "editors" - the people who should CORRECT stuff - turned this from TFA:

        “We’re talking about a sea, a sea’s worth of water,” says Hannah Cloke at the University of Reading in the UK. In terms of volume, hundreds of millions of liters of rain would have to fall across the continent to fill the deficit, she estimates.

        Into this:

        "We're talking about a sea, a sea's worth of water," says Hannah Cloke at the University of Reading in the UK. In terms of volume
  • The wettest March in years, UK has reservoirs full for the first time in years.

    Still expecting a hosepipe ban around June though just so the powers that be get the satisfaction of making us feel guilty for the few weeks of warm dry weather we might get

    • I just checked, and yes, the three major reservoirs near where I live (south UK) are all 99% or higher. But then, our water company couldn't pump water last year because of - get this - a *flood* at the pumping station, so how full they are, or aren't seems to have no bearing on the levels of incompetence of our water companies.

  • Take some of our water. Please!

  • Hey there fellow Slashdotters,

    Let's take a trip down memory lane and talk about the good old days of Soviet Russia. You know, the days of standing in line for hours just to get some bread and waiting for the government to give you permission to buy a car?

    But hey, at least they had some cool stuff like the first satellite and the first human spaceflight. It's like they were saying, "Yeah, our country may be falling apart, but we can still send a dude into space!"

    And let's not forget about their comm
  • Today where I live it hit 80F/26C and there is still a two foot deep pile of snow on the ground. 3rd wettest winter on record and kids are throwing snowballs in shorts and tee shirts. Weird, even for Minnesota.

  • No worries!!!! (Score:3)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @08:11PM (#63442736)

    Our American corporations will just sell Europe our water, much like we did our natural gas, driving up the price of water even higher for the American consumer while making exponential profits!

  • Notes From An EU Commission (Score:3)

    by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 ) on Tuesday April 11, 2023 @11:33PM (#63443060)

    I bet there will be an EU Commission setup to decide how best to use the water that they have.

    The English attendee would break away and do their own thing.

    The German attendee might demand strict controls and perhaps added fees.

    The French attendee might suggest showering instead of taking a bath.

    The Italian attendee might 1-up the French attendee by suggesting that people shower with a friend...and then they promptly left to take a shower with a friend!

  • got 27 inches of rain in 7 hours! Nothing to see here, climate change is false, blah blah.

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