I wrote about a new report this week that showed that, in 2023, rivers dried up at the highest rate in three decades. This will be a surprise to people in the UK and some parts of northern Europe, where our rivers have swollen to menacing levels. But across the Atlantic, in the Amazon, the river that brings life to the region is parched.
In short, we are already seeing the extremes warned about by scientists. As the planet heats, more water goes into the atmosphere, meaning it evaporates from rivers in some areas but is dumped, heavily, somewhere else.
Celeste Saulo, head of the World Meteorological Organization, put it nicely: “As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions.”
We are seeing this as Hurricane Milton hits Florida. Models show that climate breakdown is making extreme hurricanes twice as likely, and this one is probably supercharged by the warming ocean and moisture in the atmosphere. The speed of the storm’s growth made it almost impossible for the victims to prepare for and took meteorologists by surprise; weather forecasters wept on television while describing the might of Milton.
Humanity can’t rely on the old weather and water patterns we are so used to any more. We will have to replan where and what we farm, and even where we live.
I write a lot about farming, crops and land use in the UK, where we have historically benefited from a mild climate that gives us pretty consistent rain throughout the year. But now, this is beginning to upend. Two years ago, we faced a drought where farmers were no longer able to irrigate their crops and our capital city almost ran out of water. On our rainy little island, it became clear that the way we manage our water supplies is not going to be feasible in the future. We don’t store enough water, and maybe we grow vegetables in the wrong places; we grow most of our potatoes, one of the most water-intensive crops, in East Anglia, which is the county most at risk of drought.
This year, we face the opposite problem with fields across the country underwater, very little money spent on flood defences and a rescue plan for farmers that has faced months of delay. But this excess water won’t be stored for long and we could end up in the ridiculous position of another bad drought in a couple of years because of it.
It’s far worse in other countries. Currently, 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water for at least one month a year, and this is expected to increase to more than 5 billion by 2050, according to UN Water.
There will be situations like this all over the world. Every nation will have painful decisions to make about water. We need to get to grips, fast, with adapting to the unpredictable ways water is now travelling across the globe. Otherwise we will face hunger, thirst, death and destruction.
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