Northern Mediterranean Community | Water Knowledge Hub

Suyu Liu posted in Northern Mediterranean Community

há 3 months atrás Público

In the UK, a few places near the Thames River, start to restrict water use due to drought and heat waves. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp90p2zz999o
How about Northern Mediterranean, which is often dry and hot during summer?

Suyu Liu posted in Northern Mediterranean Community

há 3 months atrás Público

Spain, Morocco and Türkiye: Mediterranean countries ‘canaries in coal mine’ for drought impacts

Website link: https://www.euronews.com/green/2025/07/05/spain-morocco-and-turkiye-med…

By Euronews Green
Published on 05/07/2025 - 10:02 GMT+2

Drought is not just a weather event - it can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency, experts explain after a landmark survey.
“Girls pulled from school and forced into marriage, hospitals going dark, and families digging holes in dry riverbeds just to find contaminated water - these are signs of severe crisis," says Paula Guastello, drought impacts researcher at the US National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC).

Together with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the US centre has just finished surveying global droughts between 2023 to 2025. They found that some of the most widespread and damaging droughts in recorded history have hit during the last two years.

Their new report gathers information from hundreds of government, scientific and media sources to highlight the most acute drought hotspots around the world, including in the Mediterranean.

Around 35 per cent of the EU and UK fell under a form of drought warning in early June, according to the latest official data, following a record-breaking hot spring driven by climate change. Alert conditions are intensifying in large areas of Ukraine, in some parts of Türkiye, as well as in the UK, Poland, Cyprus, Greece, and the south-eastern Balkans.

“Drought is a silent killer. It creeps in, drains resources, and devastates lives in slow motion. Its scars run deep,” says UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.

Where are Europe's drought hotspots?
Spain, Morocco and Türkiye are bearing the brunt of drought in the Mediterranean, the report confirms.

Water shortages have hit Spain’s agriculture and tourism sectors hard in recent years. By September 2023, two years of drought and record heat led to a 50 per cent drop in Spain’s olive crop, causing its olive oil prices to double across the country.

Meanwhile, in Türkiye, drought has accelerated groundwater depletion, triggering sinkholes that endanger local residents and their infrastructure. It also permanently reduces aquifer storage capacity.

“The Mediterranean countries represent canaries in the coal mine for all modern economies,” says Dr Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC director.

“The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Türkiye to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming. No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent.”

Far from being “a dry spell”, Dr Svoboda adds, “This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen.”

Why drought is ‘not just a weather event’
Given the way drought compounds poverty, hunger and energy insecurity, the most devastating hotspots are found outside of Europe, in some of the world’s poorest countries.
More than 90 million people across Eastern and Southern Africa face acute hunger, according to the report, where some areas have been enduring their worst-ever recorded drought.

In Somalia, the government estimated that 43,000 people died in 2022 alone due to drought-linked hunger.

Zambia suffered one of the world's worst energy crises in April 2024 as the Zambezi River plummeted to levels that are 20 per cent of its long-term average. The country’s largest hydroelectric plant, the Kariba Dam, fell to 7 per cent generation capacity, causing blackouts of up to 21 hours per day, forcing hospitals, bakeries, and factories to close.

“Drought is not just a weather event - it can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency,” stresses report co-author Dr Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC assistant director and drought impacts researcher.

In Eastern Africa, forced child marriages more than doubled as families sought dowries to survive. Though outlawed in Ethiopia, child marriages more than doubled in frequency in the four regions hit hardest by the drought.

Across the world in the Amazon, the drought upended life for remote Indigenous and rural communities. In some areas, the river fell to its lowest level ever recorded, leaving residents stranded - including women giving birth - and entire towns without drinking water.

It is a common theme that drought takes a disproportionate toll on women and children.

“The coping mechanisms we saw during this drought grew increasingly desperate,” says Guastello.

Climate change and El Nino are creating ‘perfect storm’
Between 2023 to 2024, an El Niño climate phenomenon amplified already harsh climate change impacts, the researchers explain, triggering dry conditions across major agricultural and ecological zones.
“This was a perfect storm,” says report co-author Dr Smith. “El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits.”

The report makes several recommendations to alleviate the impact of droughts, including: stronger early warning systems to save lives; nature-based solutions like watershed restoration; off-grid energy infrastructure; and gender responsive adaptation.

“The nations of the world have the resources and the knowledge to prevent a lot of suffering,” Dr Smith adds. “The question is, do we have the will?”

This news piece mentioned that the fantastic piece 'Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023-2025' is now available! This is a great news!

Suyu Liu posted in Northern Mediterranean Community

há 4 months atrás Público

The Mediterranean Action Plan of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/MAP)
Official webpage: https://www.unep.org/unepmap/index.php/who-we-are

It seems that UNEP/MAP does a lot of work related to water and drought, sometimes with a unique 'ocean perspective'. On its webpage we can find a lot of useful information.

The Mediterranean Action Plan of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/MAP) is a regional cooperation platform established in 1975 as the first regional action plan under the UNEP Regional Seas Programme.

The Regional Seas Programme launched in 1974 to coordinate activities aimed at the protection of the marine environment through a regional approach. UNEP/MAP became a model for other UNEP-administered Regional Seas Action Plans around the world.

UNEP/MAP was instrumental in the negotiation and adoption of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and Coastal Region of the Mediterranean (Barcelona Convention) and its Protocols by the Contracting Parties: 21 Mediterranean countries and the European Union.

The Barcelona Convention and its Protocols constitute a unique and advanced multilateral legal framework for the protection of the marine and coastal environment and sustainable use of their resources in the Mediterranean.

The UNEP/MAP–Barcelona Convention system is the comprehensive institutional, legal and implementation framework that the Contracting Parties have adopted for concerted action to fulfill the vision of a healthy Mediterranean Sea and Coast that underpin sustainable development in the region.

Over the last four decades, the UNEP/MAP—Barcelona Convention system has responded to evolving environmental challenges and bolstered a growing body of knowledge on marine and coastal ecosystems and of interactions between development and environment in the Mediterranean region.

Suyu Liu posted in Northern Mediterranean Community

há 7 months atrás Público

From EU Science Hub
https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/european-and-global-drought-…

Current drought situation in Europe: The latest status of drought in Europe using a combined drought indicator

Drought conditions in Europe at the beginning of March 2025
Summary

From 1 to 10 March, the map shows slowly worsening drought conditions across southern and eastern Europe. Severe, enduring, and critical conditions persist in the Mediterranean, and Middle East regions. The Iberian Peninsula faces critical conditions, with extreme impacts due to alternating periods of drought and intense winter precipitation. In south-eastern Spain vegetation remains affected.

Warning and watch drought conditions

By early March 2025, the Combined Drought Indicator (CDI) shows warning drought conditions in sparse regions of the Iberian Peninsula and Italy, south-eastern Baltic Sea region, Poland, most of Belarus, central and eastern Ukraine, some regions of Greece, some areas of the Balkans, Cyprus, Malta and other Mediterranean islands, as well as Ireland, northern UK, few spots in southern France, western and south-eastern Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and most of in Türkiye.

Wide regions in central-eastern Europe, western Russia, eastern Alps, eastern Türkiye, and few areas in south-eastern Sweden, are under watch conditions due to a precipitation deficit.

Alert drought conditions

Some areas in the Mediterranean region, particularly in south-eastern Spain, central Greece and Crete are under persistent alert drought conditions, with impacts on the vegetation. This severe and prolonged drought is even more intense and worsening in most of northern Morocco, northern Algeria, and some regions in Tunisia, causing significant impacts. Alert conditions have been developing in south-eastern Türkiye, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, part of Jordan and northern Iraq.

Normal and recovery drought conditions

Scandinavia, southern Great Britain, north-eastern Iberian Peninsula, the majority of France, parts of Germany, Benelux and Switzerland, most of northern and central Italy, nearly all of the western Balkans, south-eastern Romania, and part of Bulgaria show normal or recovery conditions.

Temperatures

During this 10-day period, temperatures were above the seasonal average in most of Europe with the highest daily anomalies in northern and eastern Europe, and with short warm spells in the same regions.

Note: this analysis was performed on 18-03-2025, based on data referring to early March 2025, and computed with version 4.0 of the Combined Drought Indicator.

European Drought Observatory website is below:
https://drought.emergency.copernicus.eu/tumbo/edo/map/

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