California isn’t the only place feeling the wrath of drought of this summer. Central Europe is also feeling the heat as the region suffers its worst drought since 2003, and climate change experts worry that it may be a sign of what’s to come.
According to The Guardian, continuous severe drought has affected those in central France through south-central Germany into Poland, Hungary and Ukraine. The bone dry conditions stretch as far as northern Italy and Spain where farmers have taken a serious hit as agricultural production has slowed and harvests reaped far smaller yields than past seasons.
Experts fear that the region may be in for even bigger problems in the years to come. The head of the European Union’s Climate Change Unit, Franke Raes, explained to The Guardian that the drought didn’t come as a surprise.
“This is where we expect to see more extreme weather such as floods and droughts in the future, and what we are gradually starting to see in the present,” Raes said.
Raes added that most of the major European droughts and floods have taken place in the same region over the past two decades. Forecasters' ability to predict problems in the area haven’t made life easier for those living in drought zones.
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