A trend that threatens to undermine the continent’s water balance. Over the past 14 years, the absence of rainfall was only one of the problems: “The increase in temperatures in April led to the evaporation of moisture stored in the soil. As a result, in the spring there was already a marked lack of moisture in the soils of central Europe, especially in Germany.
Agriculture pays the price
This deficit cannot be compensated for in the summer and is at the origin of the low productivity of the soils and the very low level of the rivers. In other words: the summer drought is preprogrammed for April, ”explains Rohini Kumar, hydrologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Leipzig and author of a new study on drought in Europe published in Nature Climate.
In particular in Southern Europe, the phenomenon is now repeated regularly, confirming the fact that in Italy there is a lack of 5 billion cubic meters of water compared to 50 years ago, as noted by the national association of management and protection of the territory. Agriculture, which consumes over 50% of available water resources, is the sector most affected.
The most dramatic year, among the last, was 2017, with a calculated damage of at least 2 billion euros: the drought cut the crops of the main productions, from tomatoes to fruit, from rice to corn, from vineyards to hay for animals. But growers aren’t the only ones suffering from it.
The costs to the economy
According to data collected by the Climate Finance Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, the climate crisis entails considerable costs for the entire economic system: an extra degree of temperature in the last decade has resulted in an average reduction in turnover of 5.8% for Italian companies.