Europe is facing its worst drought in at least 500 years, China’s record-breaking drought takes heavy toll on farmers as crops wither in the fields, and Pakistan government last Friday declared an emergency to deal with monsoon flooding which affected more than 30mn people. Cited above are just three climate change related issues that are being repeated across continents of late.
In Europe, two-thirds of the continent is in a state of alert or warning, reducing inland shipping, electricity production and the yields of certain crops, a European Union agency said last week. The August report of the European Drought Observatory (EDO), overseen by the European Commission, said 47% of Europe is under warning conditions, with clear deficit of soil moisture, and 17% in a state of alert, in which vegetation is affected.
“The severe drought affecting many regions of Europe since the beginning of the year has been further expanding and worsening as of early August,” the report said, adding that the western Europe-Mediterranean region was likely to experience warmer and drier than normal conditions until November. Much of Europe has faced weeks of baking temperatures this summer, which worsened the drought, caused wildfires, set off health warnings, and prompted calls for more action to tackle climate change.
Summer crops have suffered in Europe, with 2022 yields for grain maize set to be 16% below the average of the previous five years and soybean and sunflowers yields set to fall by 15% and 12% respectively. Hydropower generation has been hit, with further impact on other power producers due to a shortage of water to feed cooling systems. Low water levels have hampered inland shipping, such as along the Rhine, with reduced shipping loads affecting coal and oil transport. The EDO said mid-August rainfall may have alleviated conditions, but in some cases it had come with thunderstorms that caused further damage. The observatory’s drought indicator is derived from measurements of precipitation, soil moisture and the fraction of solar radiation absorbed by plants for photosynthesis.
In China, the prolonged heatwave, which has seen temperatures pass 40C has exposed the vulnerability of the agricultural sector to climate change. The country is currently experiencing the most severe drought and heatwave since national records began in 1961. South China Morning Post reported that as of last Sunday, the drought had affected at least 2.46mn people and about 2.2mn hectares of agricultural land in nine provinces along the Yangtze River basin, including Sichuan and the neighbouring metropolis Chongqing, according to the ministry of water resources. On Thursday, the national observatory issued its orange alert — the second highest level in a four-tier colour-coded warning system — for drought across multiple provinces.
In Pakistan, officials say this year’s floods are comparable to 2010 — the worst on record — when over 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water. A statement on Friday from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said 33mn people had been “badly affected” by the flooding, while the country’s disaster agency said nearly 220,000 homes were destroyed and half a million more badly damaged. Two million acres of cultivated crops had been wiped out in Sindh alone, the provincial disaster agency said, where many farmers live hand-to-mouth, season-to-season. Earlier this year much of the nation was in the grip of a drought and heatwave, with temperatures hitting 51 degrees Celsius in Jacobabad, Sindh province. In an example of the extreme and conflicting situations precipitated by climate-change, the city is now grappling with floods that have inundated homes and swept away roads and bridges. Such scenarios are being replicated in some other countries too, confirming the unpredictability of shifting weather patterns.
