Amie KeeleyTHE reduction in rainfall in Spain is leading local provinces scrambling for water.
Researchers said the average precipitation falling on Spanish hydrological basins has undergone “notable” changes over the last 60 years.
This trend is worrying for Spain, given its recent reduction in water reserves.
The basin of the Guadiana has experienced the strongest downward trend, with a reduction of 18%.
“In order to plan the most effective way of using water, it is of fundamental importance to know what has happened in these basins, and what is happening now,” said Professor José Carlos González-Hidalgo, from the University of Zaragoza.
what reduction…
OH! caused by golf courses?
artifical grass anyone?
the reservoirs were 94% full a month or four ago…
Frederica is (yet) another person who needs to be educated in the difference between “weather” and “climate”, lol.
For the last 2 years in our area (campo above Loja) we have enjoyed the best/worst rainfall in 30 years, so our Spanish friends tell us. Great news for our well and my garden is blooming.
Suzannah, most of Andalucia will be desertified in a couple more generations, so enjoy the garden whilst you can lol.
Fred,
it won’t be two generations, by 2050. Rioja is way north, they reckon they may have 10 years more.
There are many places in central Spain where they have had to give up farming.
What so many don’t understand that a couple of wet winters is’nt altering the trend, they are just blips.
2050, give or take a century, Stuart.
Fred,
I am quoting from a study that was reviewd in the FT, 2 years ago.
It showed a map of western Europe and north Africa. By 2050 all of southern Europe and North Africa, extending right up through France, leaving only the Pas de Calais with a reasonable rainfall, will be desertified.
Scotland will have a climate on a par with Scandinavia – it would now if it were’nt for the Gulf Stream Drift but that is already faltering.
The ‘jet streams’ are radically changing and will even more so as last year in the Amazon, literally billions of trees died.
Close to Ciudad Real (way north of Andalucia) there is a national park that is rapidly turning to desert. In the farmland around this park you can where the idiot Spanish used the kind of watering systems that the French use and are soon to ban. This and another programme I saw on the Rioja region here in France. I’ll bet they never show these documentaries in Spain.
There should be no intensive crop production in Murcia – 7 years ago they drew water from 50m, now it’s 250 and still the idiots are going deeper.
All the aquifiers of southern and central Spain are emptying fast – have you forgotten how they were using tankers to take water to Barcelona and that’s Catalunya bordering France.
It has been a well known fact that Languedoc/Rousillion has had a deepening water crisis for over 20 years.
Last year in the Aveyron we had a hose pipe ban.
Italy produces all the durum wheat for pasta but not much longer – desertification. Northern Italy is suffering from drought as less rain falls in the Alps and that which does is’nt held because the idiots there are decimating forestry for skiing.
Water the most precious commodity of all – and still the Spanish want to create more golf courses.