I'm not sure if Clarkson's farm has much of a following outside of the UK. Last year they had several crops fail due to the drought over summer and honestly this year was far worse. I believe he may not have even bothered planting the normal cash crops, so it will be interesting to see how that works out. That said, the year before I think it was so wet early in the year that farmers really struggled to get crops in the ground.

In areas like Valencia there are ancient irrigation systems and water rights controlled by water councils older than many countries. I wonder if the UK will need to do similar, irrigation ponds, flood control structures and canals to control the flow of water through the landscape.

Underground cisterns are generally the way to do it and even the Romans were building them

California was also in a super drought at that time

Meh, almost nobody will want to live in most of Europe post AMOC collapse in 20-40 yrs

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Yes, good clarification, I personally spend my times at Grillplatz 11 on the Neue Donau side of Donau Insel (Danube Island) .. it has been a wonderful summer and the water is delightful. Very safe and rewarding swim, every time.

I’ve had it explained to me that it evaporates in the heat and gets deposited in the mountains and the atmosphere above the more northern states, where .. once things cool down, it condenses and moves through tributaries in a big rush or two during the massive temperature changes of October/November.

The thunder storms we’ve had in Vienna in the last few years have produced amazing floods - reminiscent of the desert storms of Australias north-west, where I am from - and a couple years back, the engineering of Viennas water ways was put to the test, with the floods overflowing railway lines and traffic arteries of the city in ways not seen much before this decade...

Finland has escaped most of the heat of Central Europe. We have had hard rains occasionally, but overall not that much more rain. From stats look like 100-150% of historic numbers.

So it has really not rained outside the high pressure zone. So I am not really sure where it all would be.

Interesting theory and I can see how you get there.

But if drainage changes were the primary cause, we would've seen drought severity increasing across the time period where straightening/etc were happening... instead the drought severity increases begin _after_ that period, better aligned with temperature changes.

Additionally, your analogy to a water leak from a tank doesn't hold, because the water recharges over time...

Further, your complaints about immigrants also doesn't make sense, as water usage has been going down (and residential utilization is quite low, altogether).

As such, my theory is that you're just a right-wing crank who wants to find a reason to deny global warming, and to hate immigrants.

> How could it not be.

Plenty of ways. That's what we have science for. For one, why choose 19th century projects when we did millenia of terraforming, mostly by doing away with forrests and wetlands, but also planting artifical forrests over dry sand areas (see the Cap Ferret fire) etc. etc.

but also, the heatwaves of this summer mostly consist of hot air from Sahara being driven to Europe and staying there.

> that the EU is doing to drive tens of millions of more people into Europe

what

I don't think this view is especially controversial. Many past infrastructure and industry projects make the drought worse today - dams, channels, mines (especially open-pit). In my area (eastern Poland) single communist-era irigation project is responsible for destroying 73% of peat bogs, meadow marshes and wet meadows [1]. Restoring them to previous condition is completely infeasible.

[1] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana%C5%82_Wieprz-Krzna

That's a really good point. I've seen some work on retaining moisture in the desert, and if memory serves, the successful ones create small check dams to retard water flow down a watercourse, giving it time to soak into the ground and replenish groundwater.

It would be interesting to see whether one could apply that to European waterways as part of marshland regeneration.

> not even to mention that the EU is doing to drive tens of millions of more people into Europe

Interesting how lived perception of resource scarcity and socio-economic change will attribute it all to ... others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_theories

Nah, the water cycle is a myth. Don’t you see all these other replies? Clearly science is only supposed to be cherry-picked to fit a narrative.

I can’t imagine what the Netherlands would look like if desertification would occur. It seems implausible that those flat, flat lands would ever turn brown and grey and dusty - but I won’t be surprised if things turn that way in a few years. I hope the Dutch have a solution, they always seem to when it comes to water control ..

Drought in The Netherlands is artificial though. Millionaire farmers are pumping up water to water their crops during the day. Due to the heat most of the spray evaporates before it touches the plants. During the winter they artificially lower the ground water level for personal benefit.

Also of this so they can gain even more millions by exporting all the food across the border. Time to block some more highways, destroy some more property and kill some more people in order to secure those sweet EU subsidies.

Wow, that's kind of incredible. I've always been able to walk out into parts of it for quite a distance in prior visits over the years but I'm guessing this new average is an extreme.

As an European, no, current situation is unprecedented.

It was getting bad already, but like this? Absurd.

Hungary was largely swamps and marshlands in the past, much of which was drained to give way for large-field monocultural agriculture, this started in the 19th century, and was further developed, until we got here. Now the "non-existent climate change" is added to that, and I wonder if our forests will survive me...

Also soil erosion is a problem, so I think I'll live to get it all to a desert.

Sure, it gets dry in summer, it’s not always so lush - at least in my experience over the years.

But, parks of dead grass, and dust devils blowing in the corners? Can’t say I’ve seen that much over the decades of visiting the region. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dry, dead grass.

I, for one, am very grateful for my neighborhood turning the streets into cooler, greener little oases for pedestrians. Perhaps those eucalyptus trees the Schönbrunner Zoo keeps for its koalas will be of use in providing avenues of shade in the decades to come, who knows …