Water Scarcity Crisis
5 September 2019
This year’s was the third hottest summer in Germany since the beginning of regular meteorological records in 1881, according to preliminary data from the Federal Meteorological Service.
Based on an analysis that took into account forecasts for the last two days of August, the average temperature for the season was 19.2 degrees Celsius, 2.9 degrees above the long-term average.
This summer brought a new record high with an extremely strong heat wave, during which, from 24 to 26 July, temperatures rose above 40 degrees Celsius for three consecutive days, and a new historic record of 42.6 degrees was measured, which is more than 2 degrees above the previous record of 40.3 degrees, recorded in August 2015.
This summer has not only been exceptionally warm but also dry in Germany, with an average of 175 millimetres of rain per square metre, which is 27 percent below the usual 239 millimetres. A number of regions suffered severe drought: in a wide stretch from North Rhine-Westphalia to the southern part of Brandenburg, rainfall was only a half, in places only a third of the long-term average.
The national average of sunny hours was 755, up 25 percent from the usual level, and making the summer of 2019 the fourth sunniest summer since 1951.
Source: MTI – Hungarian News Agency
Cape Town’s historic water crisis was a wake-up call for the entire world. Something that had previously been unimaginable happened. If the targets set in the Paris Agreement are not reached, there is reason to fear that many other major cities could suffer a similar fate within a few decades. The example of Cape Town is a timely warning that chronic water shortages are already just around the corner.
Only 1 percent of the World’s water is available fresh water and 70 percent of that is used by agriculture. Morocco is one of the countries facing the crises of less rain, drier topsoil and increasing population.
Climate change is increasingly depleting the water resources of the world – in many places, drinking water shortages are already a serious problem. The shocking images below tell a story about Earth’s largest bodies of water that we can no longer ignore.
We have known for some time that a number of countries in Africa are particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming on account of their positions alone. A recent study warns that the situation is even worse than we had previously thought.
Political tension caused by water shortages was also a feature of the history of the 20th century, and today, there is fighting in a number of zones where the lack of water was one of the initial causes of the conflict.
Up to 180 thousand people may be left without drinking water due to the severe drought.
Extreme drought is putting one of the world’s most important trade routes at risk.
The characteristic sand banks of the river have grown larger, some branches have dried out completely.
Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, shut down its main water works on 23 September citing shortages of foreign currency to import chemicals required for water treatment. The situation may not only lead to a severe water shortage for the population, but also increases the risks of diseases carried by contaminated water, such as cholera.
A comprehensive report by the European Environment Agency claims that over the next 30 years, agricultural yields could drop by up to 16 percent in Europe due to the phenomena accompanying climate change.
