May was the U.K’s driest month in 124 years, and this spring was its sunniest on record. That came as welcome relief to millions of people locked down at home to slow the spread of Covid-19. It also helped create new records for the amount of renewable energy in the British electricity mix. But as a sign of what the future might hold, it’s not great. “We can’t say whether a particular event is caused by climate change, but since global temperatures have already risen by 1.1 °C since pre-industrial times then all events are now affected by global warming,” said Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University. “So conditions at the moment are reflective of what climate models tell us future summers will be like.”
These hotter and drier conditions spell trouble—and not just in the U.K. “Even when it does rain, sometimes it’s only falling heavily and for short periods,” said Joaquin Muñoz Sabater, a scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service who studies soil moisture across Europe. “So even if it looks wet, the soil isn’t always able to regenerate because temperatures after the rainfall remain high.”
That’s bad news for farmers. In the past two months, farmers in France, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania have all become victims of drought. And when the Rhine starts to dry out, even industrial goods can’t make it to their destination on time. All this after Europe endured its hottest year on record in 2019. The long-term solution is to cut emissions and slow down warming. But there’s a lot we can do now. “We should look after our water, which we’re definitely, definitely not doing,” said Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading. “It’s going to cascade into something worse if we don’t take care of our water.”