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Severe drought in Hungary (Central Europe)

puskas78

puskas78

Hungary: Never-before-seen climate damages expected in agriculture

The harvest has been entirely destroyed by the drought over hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland in Hungary.
www.agroberichtenbuitenland.nl

Hungary struggles with drought-induced crop losses: minister

Hungary struggles with drought-induced crop losses: minister-
english.news.cn

While crop yields were not good, apparently starvation is not a threat... at least not this year?

Hungary harvests 3.9 mln tonnes of wheat, maize and sunflower crop 'at serious risk' from drought

Hungary has harvested 3.9 million tonnes of autumn wheat and 1.4 million tonnes of barley as the harvest season ended earlier than usual due to this year's heat and drought, the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement on Friday.
www.reuters.com

Also, some smaller creeks dried out completely. I saw one that was completely dry, but others were far from drying out, even saw fish in several of them. The forests are also heavily damaged. Some people said that they "look like in October" due to so many dry leaves... but it's not really accurate, because there is only green and "burned" brown now, not the many shades of yellow and red in a real Autumn!

Also, took this picture yesterday. The eastern side of Gellért Hill in Budapest. It looks "almost like" October, except there are no reds are yellows, only browns!



There was a lot of rain on the last two days of July, but that won't undo damage that already occurred.
 
Is it Hungary thing, or is it happening to the neighboring countries as well?
 
This is the sort of thing I expect in the American Southwest, not central Europe.
 
Laeril said:
This is the sort of thing I expect in the American Southwest, not central Europe.
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Welcome to the new normal. The three hottest summers since the start of modern records in 1864 were all in the last two decades. At least where I'm from.
Looking into the tales of my parents, actually showed that their 'very hot' summers are now the 'normal' summers. o_O

We have consistent climate models since at least the 90s that predicted this trend (that's when I first paid attention). The same models expect it only to get worse. Most models also include stronger storms, because more heat/energy in the air, means more power for wind. Counterintuitively, flooding will also be worse, since hot air can absorb more moisture, hence harder rain when it does rain.

So yeah. Look forward to hotter draughts in summer, wetter floods in spring and stronger storms in autumn/winter. :(
 
Vyslanté said:
The first thing that climate change killed were winters. A century ago, the Seine froze almost every year, if only for a few days. Now, we're lucky to see a snowflake or two.
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As a child, I used to live at the slope of the hills near Frankfurt. Kids from the villages further up the slope came to school by school bus, and it used to be that every winter there were several days where they would be miss the entire first lesson because snow had blocked the way.

Now that just never happens at all anymore. And that was just ~2 decades ago. There was one last hooray, the winter of... uh... 2008? 2009? I think where the amount of snow was excessive, but now it has basically all stopped.
 
Susano said:
As a child, I used to live at the slope of the hills near Frankfurt. Kids from the villages further up the slope came to school by school bus, and it used to be that every winter there were several days where they would be miss the entire first lesson because snow had blocked the way.

Now that just never happens at all anymore. And that was just ~2 decades ago. There was one last hooray, the winter of... uh... 2008? 2009? I think where the amount of snow was excessive, but now it has basically all stopped.
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Even Southern England used to get heavy snow every so often when I was a kid. You sometimes get it now but it's incredibly rare and the rarity has made it even more destructive.
 
Update: saw two completely dry creeks in Budapest. This could lead to damage that will persist for years. Most of the ecosystem in those two creeks is destroyed, only eggs or some "dormant forms" could survive. I don't know if this will lead to the extinction of a species, but it wouldn't surprise me at this point. Also, the water level of the Danube is extremely low.
Vyslanté said:
The first thing that climate change killed were winters. A century ago, the Seine froze almost every year, if only for a few days. Now, we're lucky to see a snowflake or two.
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Meanwhile most of April was extremely cold. Also, most of the last year was unusually cold, April and May were extremely cold, even the summer wasn't really hot. I'm actually a bit happy about the dry and stupidly hot weather now, because I was worried about some "sub-arctic" weather insanity after the things in 2021.
 
Susano said:
As a child, I used to live at the slope of the hills near Frankfurt. Kids from the villages further up the slope came to school by school bus, and it used to be that every winter there were several days where they would be miss the entire first lesson because snow had blocked the way.

Now that just never happens at all anymore. And that was just ~2 decades ago. There was one last hooray, the winter of... uh... 2008? 2009? I think where the amount of snow was excessive, but now it has basically all stopped.
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I think we (South Eastern US) actually get more snow now because of all the polar vortex stuff.
 
It's still warming enough to change the growing season. Fifteen years ago, blueberry season in the Mid-Atlantic US was mid-July. Now it's mid-June.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
It's still warming enough to change the growing season. Fifteen years ago, blueberry season in the Mid-Atlantic US was mid-July. Now it's mid-June.
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This is an ongoing issue with agricultural products. Especially climate sensitive and slow groing plants. We have seen that since the start of the last century (at least), regarding changes in the types of wine-grapes that are grown and in which direction the breeding programs push them.

I had a talk with my uncle this summer, about the trees in the valley, where he has a hut. Some types of tree almost stopped growing during the dry summer seasons. That's clearly apparent by the growth rings that are getting smaller for these tree breeds. Other trees do better in this changing micro climate and are taking the place of the old ones. It's just that growing a forest takes forever and this replacement is too onesided and slow. It's also encouraging certain fast growing breeds and will probably kill off some local species.

Forestry and agriculture have many, very tough changes to contend with. Long term planning and growing has gotten more difficult because of this. Many are coping well, but...
 
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The real infuriating thing is, agriculture will just suck down more water for irrigation of crops which aren't viable without external water. This staves crops which where marginal and for human consumption.

The terrifying is; we are going to see entire cities without viable water supplies beyond trucking it in. This has already started to happen in some part of the world.
 
More about the drought :

Europe is facing its worst drought in 500 years, EU agency says

Europe is facing its worst drought in at least 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent in a state of alert or warning, reducing inland shipping, electricity production and the yields of certain crops,…
www.france24.com

Or if you prefer the detailed report for August :


I am taking the whole "worst drought in 500 years" with a grain of salt because journalism need sensationalism, but yeah, that's totally bad actually.
 
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