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France has matched its record dry spell of 31 days without significant rainfall, the country’s weather service said Tuesday, amid concerns over water reserves in parts of Europe still reeling from last year’s severe drought.
With rainfall over the entire country of less than one millimetre a day since January 21, weather service Meteo France said the absence of precipitation equals the record set in spring 2020.
Winter is normally a crucial period for recharging groundwater levels with rainfall.
The number of days without rain has “never been seen” in winter before in records going back to 1959, Meteo France said Tuesday.
Last month was the third-warmest January on record in Europe, with temperatures on New Year’s Day reaching all-time highs in some parts of the continent, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitor (C3S).
>> France’s unprecedented drought shows climate change ‘spiralling out of control’
Europe endured its second-hottest year ever in 2022, with France, Britain, Spain and Italy setting new average temperature records.
The heat was compounded by severe drought, unprecedented in centuries, across the region.
Crops withered in European breadbaskets and the historic dry spell drove record wildfire intensity and placed severe pressure on the continent’s power grid and water reserves.
>> Source of Thames dries up as heatwave scorches Britain
The World Weather Attribution service last year calculated that the agricultural and ecological drought over the Northern Hemisphere was at least 20 times likelier because of human-caused climate change, warning that such extreme dry periods would become increasingly common with global heating.
In Spain, one of the European countries most exposed to the risk of drought, water reserves are currently at an average 50.7 percent of capacity,…
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