Warmer temperatures lead to drying.....Global warming increases the risk of drought in several ways. For one, water generally evaporates more quickly at higher temperatures. Yale Climate Connections Tiffany Means May11 2025 For that reason, hotter weather can result in drier soils. As high air temperatures sap liquid water from soils and plant leaves, transforming it into atmospheric water vapor via a process called transpiration, ground-level drying will increase in some regions. (Ironically, this additional atmospheric moisture triggers heavier downpours in other regions, which explains why the overall trend in the U.S. has been toward wetter conditions.) Higher air temperatures not only encourage drought conditions to build but also intensify them. What might have otherwise been a mild or moderate drought in a cooler world will become, in a warmer world, more severe as a result of increased evaporation. Warming also diminishes snowfall, an essential water resource for the estimated 1.9 billion residents of the Northern Hemisphere who depend on snowpacks, or snow reservoirs that store water during the cooler months and release it when it’s needed in the warmer, drier months. Rising temperatures increase the fraction of winter precipitation that falls as rain rather than snow and also shorten the cold season, so there’s less time for snow to even occur. Such was the case in 2015, the fourth-warmest year in the contiguous U.S., when a snow drought reduced the April snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range to a mere 5% of its historical average water content — its lowest snowpack in 500 years.

Seasonal melting of snowpacks can be thrown off-kilter, too. As average temperatures warm above freezing earlier in the spring, snowmelt occurs sooner and faster than usual. And rapid melting results in a shorter period during which soils and plants are kept moist. Another way a warmer atmosphere can disrupt precipitation is by shifting storm tracks. Ordinarily, low-pressure systems known as extratropical cyclones form between 30 and 60 degrees latitude north and south of the equator. But as the climate warms globally, storms are shifting toward the poles. This means that weather features such as atmospheric rivers, which supply as much as 50% of annual precipitation to states in the Western U.S., could cease to pass over regions where their moisture is much-needed.

Is global warming causing more droughts? ........Scientists see a clear correlation between droughts and global warming. But a correlation between two events doesn’t always mean one caused the other. For example, ice cream sales often increase around the time that baseball game attendance rises, but that does not mean that eating ice cream causes people to attend baseball games. Nor does it mean that attending baseball games causes people to eat ice cream. It can be tricky to attribute an increase in droughts to global warming because droughts are variable. In other words, they can occur every year or every few years, last for years or decades, and cause varying levels of dryness. That makes it difficult to distinguish random events from those possibly shaped by human-caused warming. However, the more drought dovetails with trends of increasing temperature, decreasing precipitation, and with computer model projections, the more confident scientists are in pointing to climate change.

In a 2020 study in the journal Science, for example, researchers observed how human-caused climate change is contributing to the 21st-century megadrought in the Western U.S. and northern Mexico by evaluating trends in modeled temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation data between 1901 and 2018. According to the study’s findings, human-caused warming accounts for 46% of this drought’s severity. What about the rest of the world? Scientists have been cautious about linking human activities to global drought patterns, largely because drought hasn’t occurred as uniformly worldwide as it has across individual regions. That said, building evidence supports the climate change-drought connection on a global scale. According to an August 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists have high confidence that for every half degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) the atmosphere warms, noticeable increases will occur in some regions in the intensity and frequency of droughts that harm agriculture and ecosystems. Similarly, the report notes that extreme agricultural and ecological drought events that used to occur once every 10 years are now 1.7 times more likely than they were from 1850 to 1900, before humans heavily influenced the climate.......read on        https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/05/climate-change-and-droughts-whats-the-connection/   

Growing Water Risks Threaten World’s Most Cherished Heritage Sites. WRI July 1, 2025  Samantha Kuzma Water is impacting some of the Earth’s most cherished places: The Taj Mahal, for example, faces water scarcity that is increasing pollution and depleting groundwater, both of which are damaging the mausoleum. In 2022, a massive flood closed down all of Yellowstone National Park and cost over $20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen. Water issues — whether it’s drought, scarcity, pollution or flooding — have become a threat to many of the more than 1,200 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These natural landscapes and cultural landmarks around the globe, including the Taj Mahal and Yellowstone National Park, are recognized for their “outstanding universal value” to people and the planet.Places ranging from the biodiversity-rich Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, to cultural treasures like the sacred city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico, to bustling urban centers like Morocco’s Medina of Fez are facing growing water risks that are not just endangering the sites, but the millions of people who depend on them for food, livelihoods, a connection to their culture, or who just enjoy traveling to these destinations.

 An analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct data shows 73% of all non-marine UNESCO World Heritage Sites are exposed to at least one severe water risk (water stress, drought, river flooding or coastal flooding), with 21% Specifically, 40% (470) of world heritage sites are exposed to severe baseline water stress; 37% (434) face severe drought risk; 33% (391) of sites are exposed to severe riverine flood risk; and 4% (49) are exposed to severe coastal flood risk. of sites facing dual problems of too much and too little water. While the global share of World Heritage Sites exposed to high-to-extremely high levels of water stress is projected to rise from 40% to 44% by 2050, impacts will be far more severe in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia, and northern China — areas where exiAmong the 1,172 non-marine sites we analyzed, 73% are exposed to at least one severe water risk; 21% face dual problems of too much and too little water.sting water stress is exacerbated by extensive river regulation, damming and upstream water withdrawals. In these regions, the combined pressures of infrastructure development and climate change pose a significant threat to both natural ecosystems and the cultural heritage they sustain.Water risks — such as drought and flooding — Water risks — such as drought and flooding — are threatening many UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the globe.

Hotspots like Petra in Jordan, the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu in Peru and Sagarmatha National Park (the home of Mt. Everest) in Nepal, are facing growing problems of too much water, or too little. An analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct platform classify these sites and nearly 900 of the cultural and natural sites on UNESCO’s list as severe because they fall into high or extremely-high exposure categories. Among the 1,172 non-marine sites we analyzed, 73% are exposed to at least one severe water risk; 21% face dual problems of too much and too little water......read on keep on scrolling down 

 Spain and Portugal wildfires drive worst EU season on record BBC 28 AUG-2025 Elizabeth DawsonBBC News andErwan RivaultData Designer, A record one million hectares - equivalent to about half the land area of Wales - have burned across the European Union so far this year, making it the worst wildfire season since records began in 2006. Spain and Portugal have been hit especially hard, with roughly 1% of the entire Iberian Peninsula scorched, according to EU scientists. The worsening fire season in the Mediterranean has been linked directly to climate change in a separate study by the World Weather Attribution group at Imperial College London. Experts warn that more frequent and severe fires across Europe are likely to continue in the future. More than two thirds of the area burned in the EU is in Spain and Portugal alone. In Spain, more than 400,000 hectares have burned since the beginning of this year up until 26 August, according to the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). This record is more than six times the Spanish average for this time period between 2006 and 2024.

Neighbouring Portugal has also suffered a record burn area of 270,000 hectares so far - almost five times the average for the same period. The combined burn area across the Iberian peninsula this year is 684,000 hectares - four times the area of Greater London, and most of it burned in just two weeks. Fires have been concentrated in forested areas of northern Portugal and in Spain's north-western regions of Galicia, Asturias and Castile and León. Protected areas like Picos de Europa National Park have been impacted, as well as major routes on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage network which usually attracts more than 100,000 visitors in the summer months. The events have triggered the largest known deployment of the EU civil protection mechanism's firefighting force. Smoke from fires has dramatically decreased air quality in the area, with southerly wind sending smoke as far as France and the UK.Climate change makes the conditions leading to wildfires more likely, but in a vicious cycle, the fires also release more planet-warming carbon dioxide gas (CO2) into our atmosphere. CO2 released by fires in Spain this year has reached a record 17.68 million tonnes, according to the EU. This is more than any total annual CO2 emissions since 2003 from wildfires in that country, when data was first recorded by satellites. For comparison, it is more than the total annual CO2 emitted by all of Croatia in 2023.....read on      https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6n8qqlj8go