Just took a train ride from Vienna to Budapest for a few days, and couldn’t help but notice how very, very dry everything is .. as an Australian living in Europe for a few decades now, I’ve always been intrigued by just how green everything is, literally something growing in every single crack in the pavement, or endless rolling green fields of prosperity during spring - whereas, where I’m from its year-long spinifex and grass shrubs and wattles with the occasional bush flower bloom, barely hanging on out in the desert, mostly reds and blacks and greys, not much green - so the vibrancy of European fields and the abundant diversity of countryside flora have always been pleasant to my eyes ..
During this trip, I was kind of shocked that things felt a bit more Australian to my eyes .. the grasses are dry and barren, the beautiful city parks of both Budapest and Vienna dustier than usual, the Danube water level definitely noticeably lower than I remember ever seeing.
I’ve long been encouraging my European friends to not take the abundance of growth for granted, and now we see it in the environment, plain and clear: the worlds’ weather is changing.
A week of sweltering heat is predicted for us again in Vienna, and as we get started on September and then October so close, two thoughts are on my mind: use this opportunity to go for more dips in the Danube, and .. I wonder what the floods of late-autumn will bring, because .. inevitably .. this super dry summer means there will be heavier rains in October. Might be we look back in a month or two and wish we had this dry heat back again, who knows ..
Either way, neither city is particularly comfortable in the heat. A hundred or so years ago, the heat retention was a feature. Now it’s a bug.
As far as I remember, here in Budapest - apart from a handful of quick showers - it rained exactly once all summer, and altogether about four times since the end of winter. The city is estimated to lose a third of its trees in the next 10-15 years.
The summer heat, the drought, combined with winter cold spells and now usual late spring frosts have all but destroyed the country's agriculture too. The new government has initiated a water retention plan, but it might be too little to late.
I had a similar observation this year. In 2015, I was in California, was doing some hiking on the weekends, and I found it very unnatural how all the grasses were dry, trails dusty, on the hills/mountains. I came back to Slovakia, and I was happy to see the green grass. Fast-forward to 2026, and our grasses are equally dry and trails are equally dusty. Water management seems to be more important than ever, because this is only going to get worse. Maybe we need to build massive reservoirs, to retain the flood water somehow, if we want to keep living here in the next 100 years.
To be honest, it's not unusual for that part of the Europe to be pretty yellow in August. I was taking train rides to Budapest regularly since 2010. But it's getting worse for sure.
Finland has escaped most of the heat of Central Europe. We have had hard rains occasionally, but overall not that much more rain. From stats look like 100-150% of historic numbers.
So it has really not rained outside the high pressure zone. So I am not really sure where it all would be.
that sounds wonderful from the ~1000 square miles of Phoenix, Arizona, where a century of concrete and asphalt retain so much heat that the clouds bounce around the borders of the heat bubble overhead, unable to dump rain regularly enough to evaporate away the stored heat, but with rainfall regularly visible outside the edges of the metropolitan area, in the wide open skies.
I’ve had it explained to me that it evaporates in the heat and gets deposited in the mountains and the atmosphere above the more northern states, where .. once things cool down, it condenses and moves through tributaries in a big rush or two during the massive temperature changes of October/November.
The thunder storms we’ve had in Vienna in the last few years have produced amazing floods - reminiscent of the desert storms of Australias north-west, where I am from - and a couple years back, the engineering of Viennas water ways was put to the test, with the floods overflowing railway lines and traffic arteries of the city in ways not seen much before this decade...
I can’t imagine what the Netherlands would look like if desertification would occur. It seems implausible that those flat, flat lands would ever turn brown and grey and dusty - but I won’t be surprised if things turn that way in a few years. I hope the Dutch have a solution, they always seem to when it comes to water control ..
I think currently one of the biggest risks for The Netherlands is salinization. If there is not enough river water and the groundwater level is too low, sea water will push upward, contaminating the river beds and increasingly much soil around it. This summer they had to close locks to block seawater and to increase the fresh water level. Of course, this has a considerable economic damage, since it blocks inland shipping.
Sure, it gets dry in summer, it’s not always so lush - at least in my experience over the years.
But, parks of dead grass, and dust devils blowing in the corners? Can’t say I’ve seen that much over the decades of visiting the region. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dry, dead grass.
I, for one, am very grateful for my neighborhood turning the streets into cooler, greener little oases for pedestrians. Perhaps those eucalyptus trees the Schönbrunner Zoo keeps for its koalas will be of use in providing avenues of shade in the decades to come, who knows …
Bluntly: too late. You'd have to rewind to 2001 or so and go on the strictest measures worldwide. But we are utterly unequipped to deal with global issues, the Ozon layer success notwithstanding.
Just a friendly reminder that Fortune has been owned since 2018 by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon, a member of the Chearavanont family that controls the CP Group conglomerate. CP Group created Siam Land Flying in 1991 as its in-house flight department for executives. It later added charter (Executive Wings) and air-ambulance services and still operates King Air 350 and Hawker jets.
These owners don't care about any of your feelings on climate change.
>These owners don't care about any of your feelings on climate change.
Would you rather than they kill stories relating to climate change and pretend everything's fine instead? If not, what's the actual point of bringing that factoid up? Sure, rich people flying in private jets might be bad, but I'm not sure why it deserves extra condemnation just because they happen to own a publication that's reporting on the effects of climate change.
Just came back from a bike tour through rural Bavaria, it's insane how dusty everything is - and that despite a short but intense rain today night. The farmers around here are pretty much screwed this season, and not just the crop farmers but the cattle farmers as well, as they have to buy lots of feed now that they'd only have to buy in winter.
I must depend on the country because the trend is that some countries, the UK for instance, are receiving more rain as climate warms, but it is becoming more seasonal. This year winter was extremely wet then indeed summer has been a record dry, so not sure how the year will look like overall (plus it's a strong El Niño year).
It's too late for that. We had to do it 20 years ago. Plus, you and I have no power over fossil fuel extraction, but we do have the individual ability to put sulphur in the upper atmosphere (with effort). Game theory rules everything.
I think you misread. It's not "euros is dollars", it's "millions of euros is millions of dollars", simply saying that conversion rate is close enough to 1:1 that no new number is needed
It's just a monetary conversion and it's in their style guides. How much is "millions of euros" in dollars? Answer: "millions of dollars".
If they'd said "it's estimated to cost 1.5 million euros", they'd have added "(1.7 million dollars)". But since they didn't have a specific value, they just used the units.
I imagine their style guide says non-dollar currency amounts always need to have a dollar conversion. There are lots of Americans who won’t know the current USD-EUR ratio off the top of their heads. It has fluctuated over the years and used to be significantly further from parity, and we essentially never buy goods priced in euros here.
Well, million euro’s is currently about 1,158,300.00 United States Dollars, so maybe the copy editor looked at the number and didn’t want to offend the sensibilities of their readers .. anyway, the point is, I don’t think this (parentheses) indicates a dumbing down of anything, other than maybe a sleepy editor who didn’t catch its distraction ..
I like to rant about "journalists" just copy-pasting Apple's claims that it's recycling program retrieved "more than 2204lb of gold". So is it no more than 2205lb? And why the specific number? Oh is it because in their "environmental report", they just got round numbers in metric (e.g. here 1000kg) and converted them to imperial? (There were about 10 of those numbers, and they all have the same issue). And the concept of significant figures was missed by the school curriculum of everyone involved?
I don't know what Europeans are worried about. You'd have to ask them. Who's dying from "heat warnings"? Are you trying to make my point about rampant idiocy in my country?
If you were assuming that I'm European for some dumb reason, then rest assured I'm not worried about this passing thought on the writing style of a publication I never read.
Thank you for your concern, but I will be alright.
The article is shining a light on a serious, potentially devastating situation in Europe. You, due to ignorance or misunderstanding, point out that Americans are supposedly stupid because millions of dollars are roughly millions of euros. But the underlying problem is that it is the Europeans that are worried the most about climate change, and are the ones that have refused to implement mitigating strategies that would help overcome the challenge. They lack energy resources, the will to take action, and rely on blaming others for their predicament. But it is stupid Americans with their energy, air conditioning, and water reservoirs.
Legally? Almost certainly no one. Ethically? The corporate executives who deliberately covered up evidence of global warming, starting back in the 70s.[1]
Europe is caught in a dilemma: tourism, air travel, and city hopping are its economic lifeblood that keeps the continent running, but these also cause the greatest damage to the environment.
Since they can't fix the real problem are trying to go "green" in counterproductive ways that make things worse: blowing up nuclear plants or taxing cow fart.
More like 6%, roughly in line with its population share (5.4%). Not sure if that includes air travel, international air travel often isn't included in national statistics. https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025
Whenever I see those statistics, I always find them very weird. Many of our products are made in China, but those are counted towards China's global emission, not Europe's. It also applies to the need of power generation for delocalized industry or importing food. A country handling a lot of industry will have a very high per-capita emission, but the people living there may actually have very low individual emissions.
If it's not significant, can I have 5% of your net worth?
If the EU mandated that products imported are made in a carbon neutral fashion, then importers of products will pay attention. Unfortunately it means higher prices, and the governments will get voted out of office by people voting for the populists selling the electoral promise of "Make Prices Low Again!"...
The EU is responsible for a lot more than that once you factor in emissions in other countries producing goods bought by people and businesses in EU countries.
Unless you count the historical city center of Venice as a big city I doubt you'd get many big cities getting even close to those numbers
I can't easily/quickly find some numbers but if we want to accept, with a grain of salt, Gemini research on this even in Venice (I think it counts Mestre as well) it's ~15% and that's the highest it found.
Complete nonsense. Even climate chance won't change the amount of rainfall we get over the course of the year. In fact, it will most likely be wetter due to it.
But it will become more uneven, with droughts followed by torrential rains and floods. We simply need to adapt by creating underground water basins that store torrential rainfall preventing floods and also serve as buffers for when the drought comes.
I do believe places like Spain could see more desertification, though. But they were at the brink for centuries in any case, especially inland.
I’ve been to quite a few deserts that get the occasional seasonal torrential rain.
They still remain deserts nine to ten months out of twelve.
The water saturates the soil, can’t percolate to underground aquifers where it could otherwise be stored, and runs into (ephemeral) rivers, washing away some of whatever is left of the soil with it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if two places could have roughly the same yearly amount of precipitation yet look completely different depending on how the rainfalls are distributed over time.
Droughts are scary and they suck badly. California went through one for 10+ years. However, don’t go off the deep end and think that it’s the “new normal” like Californians did at one point.
All it took was one big rainfall a few years ago, and California has been out of drought ever since then. The reservoirs have been above historic norms and at the end of this summer, it’s only “abnormally dry”. Compare that to a few years ago where the entire state was mostly in an exceptional level of drought.
Droughts and heat waves suck and many people are suffering but nature goes in cycles and it will get better.
People are not scared of individual droughts. They are scared of the patterns. Here in Slovakia, the last real winter with proper snow depths we had was in 2018, if I remember correctly. There is pretty much no snow anymore. All the water comes in form of heavy rainfall, causing massive floods, and the water goes straight to the sea. Nature depends on the water accumulating on the mountains during the winter, and that just doesn't seem to happen, at least in this part of Europe.
During this trip, I was kind of shocked that things felt a bit more Australian to my eyes .. the grasses are dry and barren, the beautiful city parks of both Budapest and Vienna dustier than usual, the Danube water level definitely noticeably lower than I remember ever seeing.
I’ve long been encouraging my European friends to not take the abundance of growth for granted, and now we see it in the environment, plain and clear: the worlds’ weather is changing.
A week of sweltering heat is predicted for us again in Vienna, and as we get started on September and then October so close, two thoughts are on my mind: use this opportunity to go for more dips in the Danube, and .. I wonder what the floods of late-autumn will bring, because .. inevitably .. this super dry summer means there will be heavier rains in October. Might be we look back in a month or two and wish we had this dry heat back again, who knows ..
Either way, neither city is particularly comfortable in the heat. A hundred or so years ago, the heat retention was a feature. Now it’s a bug.
The summer heat, the drought, combined with winter cold spells and now usual late spring frosts have all but destroyed the country's agriculture too. The new government has initiated a water retention plan, but it might be too little to late.
What's the process here for that region? I don't think the moisture is waiting anywhere.
So it has really not rained outside the high pressure zone. So I am not really sure where it all would be.
The thunder storms we’ve had in Vienna in the last few years have produced amazing floods - reminiscent of the desert storms of Australias north-west, where I am from - and a couple years back, the engineering of Viennas water ways was put to the test, with the floods overflowing railway lines and traffic arteries of the city in ways not seen much before this decade...
But, parks of dead grass, and dust devils blowing in the corners? Can’t say I’ve seen that much over the decades of visiting the region. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much dry, dead grass.
I, for one, am very grateful for my neighborhood turning the streets into cooler, greener little oases for pedestrians. Perhaps those eucalyptus trees the Schönbrunner Zoo keeps for its koalas will be of use in providing avenues of shade in the decades to come, who knows …
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
These owners don't care about any of your feelings on climate change.
Would you rather than they kill stories relating to climate change and pretend everything's fine instead? If not, what's the actual point of bringing that factoid up? Sure, rich people flying in private jets might be bad, but I'm not sure why it deserves extra condemnation just because they happen to own a publication that's reporting on the effects of climate change.
If they'd said "it's estimated to cost 1.5 million euros", they'd have added "(1.7 million dollars)". But since they didn't have a specific value, they just used the units.
If you were assuming that I'm European for some dumb reason, then rest assured I'm not worried about this passing thought on the writing style of a publication I never read.
Thank you for your concern, but I will be alright.
1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...
Since they can't fix the real problem are trying to go "green" in counterproductive ways that make things worse: blowing up nuclear plants or taxing cow fart.
You can cut all the city hopping you want and it won't make the slightest difference.
If the EU mandated that products imported are made in a carbon neutral fashion, then importers of products will pay attention. Unfortunately it means higher prices, and the governments will get voted out of office by people voting for the populists selling the electoral promise of "Make Prices Low Again!"...
In bigger cities, it might be closer to 20-30% of their economy.
Take that away, and it would have a cascading effect through entire countries.
Unless you count the historical city center of Venice as a big city I doubt you'd get many big cities getting even close to those numbers
I can't easily/quickly find some numbers but if we want to accept, with a grain of salt, Gemini research on this even in Venice (I think it counts Mestre as well) it's ~15% and that's the highest it found.
https://assets-global.website-files.com/6329bc97af73223b5759...
But it will become more uneven, with droughts followed by torrential rains and floods. We simply need to adapt by creating underground water basins that store torrential rainfall preventing floods and also serve as buffers for when the drought comes.
I do believe places like Spain could see more desertification, though. But they were at the brink for centuries in any case, especially inland.
They still remain deserts nine to ten months out of twelve.
The water saturates the soil, can’t percolate to underground aquifers where it could otherwise be stored, and runs into (ephemeral) rivers, washing away some of whatever is left of the soil with it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if two places could have roughly the same yearly amount of precipitation yet look completely different depending on how the rainfalls are distributed over time.
All it took was one big rainfall a few years ago, and California has been out of drought ever since then. The reservoirs have been above historic norms and at the end of this summer, it’s only “abnormally dry”. Compare that to a few years ago where the entire state was mostly in an exceptional level of drought.
Droughts and heat waves suck and many people are suffering but nature goes in cycles and it will get better.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2526041123