Europe and the Mediterranean basin saw record drought in August, with more than half of the land affected, according to AFP analysis of EU data.<\/p>\n
Last month, 53 percent of the region was affected by drought — an all-time high since records began in 2012 — according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.<\/p>\n
The figure is far above the 2012-2024 average for August of 30.1 percent.<\/p>\n
Eastern Europe and the Balkans were particularly hard hit. Thousands of residents were evacuated and two people were killed as a result of wildfires in Balkan states spurred by high temperatures.<\/p>\n
Western Europe was also badly affected, with Portugal seeing a drop in rainfall across 70 percent of the country.<\/p>\n
France, hit by its second heatwave of the summer in August, experienced water shortages in two-thirds of the country.<\/p>\n
Several countries in the eastern Mediterranean were severely impacted, with more than 90 percent of Armenia, Georgia and Lebanon all affected by drought.<\/p>\n
Turkey, which experienced water shortages in 84 percent of the country, also faced numerous wildfires.<\/p>\n
The Copernicus dataset, drawing on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations, has recorded relentlessly rising temperatures as the planet warms as a result of humanity’s emissions of greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n
pp\/shu\/ys\/dhw\/rsc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe and the Mediterranean basin saw record drought in August, with more than half of the land affected,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[96398,18904,2000,299,5187,147150,42152,147152,147151,17669],"class_list":{"0":"post-432828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-copernicus-climate-change-service","9":"tag-eastern-europe","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-drought-observatory","14":"tag-mediterranean-basin","15":"tag-nalini-lepetit-chella","16":"tag-record-drought","17":"tag-western-europe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115223491265795657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432828","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=432828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}