> It's a crisis measured in hard numbers: reservoir levels, rainfall data, aquifer depletion rates.
Of course I went to check the actual numbers from official sources and they tell a different story. Reservoir levels near historical maximum. So much for building an article on "hard numbers" without pointing to sources.
Italy, Spain... eg. https://embalses.net shows maximum historical levels after a sharp bump these past 2 years... pretty sure it's the same story in many EU countries. Droughts are there until they aren't. Normal fluctuations if you check an actual chart going 50-100 years back.
Can you post a historical chart of Cyprus? maybe it tells a different story
We had an exceptionally wet winter - reservoirs which I have not seen full in a decade are suddenly at capacity - or were, a few weeks ago. There’s now a rapid draw-down however as the weather has shifted to unseasonably hot almost overnight.
The main problem isn’t reservoir levels, however, as most agriculture in Iberia doesn’t use reservoir water, rather, on-site boreholes - and the groundwater is getting seriously depleted.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that folks do here that doesn’t help matters, however - olive groves and other arboriculture, which is a large part of agriculture in Iberia, are kept with bare topsoil, as the belief is that the grass steals the water, and irrigation is done with broadcast rather than drip, and it all evaporates almost as fast as they can spray it. We don’t plough or irrigate ours, and we get a crop - we just cut the grass at the end of spring to reduce the fire hazard. There’s also a tragedy of the commons affair going on, where people pump as much as possible from their boreholes in the spring to keep in open black plastic lined storage ponds, because they feel that if they don’t their neighbour will get the water and there won’t be any for them - so water which would have been safely stored underground is brought to the surface and put in perfect conditions to evaporate.
None of it is sustainable, and it’s going to end in tears.
Usually that is a sign of subsidized water below cost, which disincentivizes the more efficient irrigation methods you highlight, at least that's what happens in California with is baroque system of senior and junior water rights and its "use it or lose it" mentality.
Droughts are there until they aren't. Now you see it, now you don't. That's just a perspective of the annual situation, but there's an emerging pattern of recurring drought at shorter and shorter intervals. It's right there in the article: "'We used to have drought cycles every 20 years,' according to Cyprus Water Development Department data. 'Now it's every two or three years.'"
Can you? can you provide a historical (25+ years) chart of reservoir levels in Cyprus or any EU country? Otherwise let me assume you just fell for a sensationalist article
Of course I went to check the actual numbers from official sources and they tell a different story. Reservoir levels near historical maximum. So much for building an article on "hard numbers" without pointing to sources.