A drought has been declared across wide swathes of England after a meeting of experts.
The prolonged dry conditions, with some areas of the country not receiving significant rainfall all summer, have caused the National Drought Group to declare an official drought.
The Environment Agency has moved into drought in eight of its 14 areas: Devon and Cornwall, Solent and South Downs, Kent and south London, Herts and north London, East Anglia, Thames, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, and the east Midlands.
Documents seen by the Guardian show the Environment Agency expects a further two areas will move into drought later in August. These are Yorkshire and West Midlands.
Could it be that the globe is warming?
Those in the meeting were shown harrowing statistics about England’s food security. Half of the potato crop is expected to fail as it cannot be irrigated, and even crops that are usually drought tolerant such as maize have been failing.
The group was told “irrigation options are diminishing with reservoirs being emptied fast”, and losses of between 10% and 50% are expected for crops including carrots, onions, sugar beet, apples and hops. Milk production is also down nationally due to a lack of food for cows, and wildfires are putting large areas of farmland at risk.
Farmers are deciding whether to drill crops for next year, and there are concerns that many will decide not to, with dire consequences for the 2023 harvest.
This is one of the ways global warming is going to play out: bad harvests, and all that flows from that.
While previous dry summers have been offset by wet autumns, meaning the worst effects on water supply have not hit, those present at the meeting were told that was unlikely to be the case this year, with arid conditions predicted to continue due to climate breakdown.
Slides from the EA say: “An increased chance of warm conditions through August to October is consistent with an increased westerly flow from warmer than average seas, and our warming climate. With a typical north-west (wetter) to south-east (drier) gradation in rainfall most likely, there are no strong signals for a significant amelioration of current dry conditions.”
Tighten those belts.
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3 responses to “Across wide swathes”
Across Europe rivers are drying up. The Rhine barges can only be partially loaded due to dropping water levels:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/fears-water-levels-in-rhine-could-fall-below-critical-mark/2022/08/10/d1658b94-18ba-11ed-b998-b2ab68f58468_story.html
When I was in Phoenix I needed to take water samples from a flowing river so I went to the Salt RIver below the Tempe Town Lake. I crossed through a fence at the bank because it was in service to science, and tried to find a stream that I could draw from. No luck, really, so I decided that my only option was to use water from one of the canals.
The Rhine will soon look like that. It doesn’t seem like that long ago Europe was deluged by floods, but that’s the way of warming climate, isn’t it? Weather extremes from drought to flood, hardly the thing for feeding a growing population.
Perhaps the only way that Europe will be able to maintain a water supply is desalinzation, But for the nativists, I see a silver lining. It will mean fewer people will seek economic refuge in Europe as they flee drought.
As if climate change wasn’t enough, let’s add the war in Ukraine as another complicating factor in keeping people fed.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2022/ukraine-black-sea-corridor/
Negotiations are underway to permit tonnes of Ukrainian wheat to be shipped overseas.
“Negotiations”… Load them barges up with grain, get them torpedoed despite any previous agreement. Then get new promises from the Neo-Soviets. Rinse and repeat.
That’s how I tend to play Civilization and I recognize the impulse.