Winter heatwaves, lack of precipitation compound effects of devastating summer droughts in Europe

Less than a year after severe droughts rocked Europe, parts of the continent are dealing with a devastating repeat.

"The situation is really very [concerning] because… it hasn't rained in the last four to five weeks in several parts of western Europe," said Andrea Toreti, co-ordinator at the European Drought Observatory.

"We see already critical conditions in terms of water content in the soil — and having seen what happened last year, we know the risk, especially for sectors such as agriculture," he said from Italy.

The lack of precipitation, mixed with a record-breaking heatwave, has caused some canals, lakes and rivers to shrink — and completely dry up in some cases.

This is impacting several sectors in France, Spain and Italy, including agriculture, energy and river transport. 

According to Toreti, these extreme droughts could become a new normal for parts of Europe.

"This could be a look into the future … because if we do nothing in terms of mitigating climate change, then basically we could have these kind of events almost every year," he said.

"Having seen the impacts of a severe drought, you can imagine and all can understand what this means if such a drought is going to happen every year."

Toreti spoke to The Current's Matt Galloway about the severity of the droughts and the impact of human-induced climate change. Here's part of their conversation.

What are you hearing from people specifically in the agricultural sector, especially after last summer when … parts of Europe had the worst drought conditions in 500 years? What has that meant for farmers?

Well, basically, it's time to rethink and redesign some of our approaches to agriculture. 

I participated just a month ago [in] a meeting that was involving the rice producers, because there have been some test to develop and to apply new water-management strategies to avoid the peak of water [use] from the rice sector when there is also the water the highest demand from grain maize. 

These new agro-management techniques might indeed help to avoid water competition, especially in the critical part of the year.

Of course, having such a drought already makes the applicability of such approaches difficult. So, of course, in the agricultural sector, there is really high concern because last year we had really remarkable losses.