France and Spain face this Wednesday their third heat wave since June, with a drought that is accentuating throughout Europe and that forced the Netherlands to officially declare itself in a situation of “water scarcity” while the French Minister of Energy Transition warned that “the climate of 2022 is, perhaps, the coolest in the coming years.”
“Wednesday will be the hottest day on a national scale,” the Météo-France public agency warned in France, but the heat peak will continue until Thursday “moving east,” the AFP agency detailed.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition also announced that two other departments are suffering from a drought crisis, Lozere and Haut-Rhin, and the prefect of Upper Corsica asked in a tweet that citizens reduce their water consumption because “if we continue at this rate, there will be no water in 25 days!”
Spain
After a brief lull in late July, Spain entered a new alert this Wednesday with temperatures that can exceed 40 degrees in several southern provinces. This Tuesday they reached 43.3 in the town of Talavera de la Reina, in the central province of Toledo.
“There is no doubt that climate change is behind it”said the spokesman for the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet), Rubén del Campo.
Tropical nights are expected in which temperatures will not drop below 20 degrees in various areas of eastern and southern Spain, as a result of high temperatures in the Mediterranean, between 3 and 4 degrees above normal, according to Aemet.
France
“Between Wednesday and Thursday maximum temperatures will be greater than or equal to 35 degrees, with peaks of 39 or 40 degrees in the southwest”, indicated Météo-France, which put 26 departments on orange alert due to a heat wave.
Long periods without rain threaten certain crops and force restrictions on the use of water, since France is one of the European countries most exposed to drought.
“I have seen how my olive flowers were burned,” lamented Jean Berneau, 64, an olive farmer from Lagorce, who after producing two tons of oil from his olives in 2021, does not expect to reach more than 400 liters this year.
This heat only makes the drought worse and July 2022 is “the second driest month” in France since measurements began in 1958-1959, with a rainfall deficit close to 84% compared to normal, according to Météo-France.
All of Europe is affected, July was the driest since 1935 in England, which is now in a state of “prolonged dry weather”, the stage before drought, which implies precautionary measures.
Several water companies announced restrictions affecting millions of people, and farmers reported crop failures of green leafy vegetables, beans, and berries, in addition to the ongoing risk of forest fires.
Czech Republic and Germany
Secondly, on the border between the Czech Republic and Germany, on July 24 a forest fire broke out in the Bohemian Switzerland National Parkwhere the temperature was 36.4 degrees.
PolandIn this country the level of the rivers is very low and in several regions restrictions have been imposed on the use of water, especially in home gardens.
The drought and the heat wave are “the manifestation of global warming. Today nobody questions it”explained the French Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
“The climate of 2022 is perhaps the coolest of the next few years,” he warned.
