The National Drought Group is made up of the Environment Agency, government, Met Office, water companies and others.<\/p>\n
There are no official droughts in Wales and Northern Ireland at the moment. Scotland does not declare droughts but monitors “water scarcity”.<\/p>\n
Parts of eastern Scotland are in “moderate” scarcity \u2013 the second most extreme category \u2013 which means there is “clear” environmental impact.<\/p>\n
In England there is no single definition of drought, but it is ultimately caused by a prolonged period of low rainfall, which has knock-on effects for nature, agriculture and water supplies.<\/p>\n
England had its driest spring in more than 100 years, followed by three heatwaves in quick succession for some areas in June and July.<\/p>\n
That intense warmth has drawn even more moisture out of the soil.<\/p>\n
So while it may be raining where you live today, it’s unlikely to be enough to bring water levels back to normal across the country.<\/p>\n
The Environment Agency (EA) declares droughts in England based on reservoir levels, river flows and how dry the soil is, alongside long-term weather forecasts.<\/p>\n
“We certainly expect more regions to enter drought status,” said Richard Thompson, deputy director of water resources at the EA, adding that further details would be announced later on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
In a “reasonable worst-case scenario” – where regions get 80% of their long-term average rainfall – another five regions across central and southern England could enter drought status by September, joining Yorkshire and the North West, according to the EA.<\/p>\n
Current long-term forecasts suggest roughly normal levels of rainfall over the next few months, however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Drought Group is made up of the Environment Agency, government, Met Office, water companies and others.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-265633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114854583541547601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}