A prolonged drought has driven the Danube, one of Europe’s largest rivers, to record low water levels, disrupting tourism and industry and forcing nuclear power plants in Hungary and Romania to scale back production.
In Budapest, Hungary’s capital, the national water authority measured the Danube at 23 centimeters (9 inches) on Wednesday morning, well below the previous all-time low of 33 centimeters (13 inches) set in 2018. The river is expected to ebb further in the coming days, with no significant rain in the forecast and temperatures forecast to exceed 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) across the region.
The Danube, which runs through 10 countries from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea, has receded to never-before-seen lows along much of its course, exposing rocks, sand bars and old shipwrecks that have rarely been seen before. Photographer Gabor Kertesz, who documented the exposed shoal at the base of Budapest’s Margaret Bridge, told the Associated Press: “The bare rocks, the dry sand bars around the bridge pillars … it’s all shocking to see how things were before and how they are now. Where will this lead, what will happen? We don’t know that yet, but this must be the result of climate change.”
The low water has forced popular cruise ships, where passengers usually disembark for sightseeing in Budapest, to dock far upriver, while cargo ships have stopped operating nearly entirely, according to Hungary’s Ministry of Transport and Investment. In Bulgaria, police on Tuesday evacuated 186 tourists from a cruise ship that ran aground near the port city of Vidin. The vessel, the Viking Ullur, had been scheduled to take on supplies but ran into a shallow shoal, according to Bulgaria’s state news agency BTA. The ship’s 52 crew members may have to remain on board for an extended period depending on navigation conditions. Viking strongly disputed reports of food or drinking water shortages, saying the ship was “well stocked” and had provisions to support those on board for up to a week.
In Serbia, hundreds of small boats and dozens of cargo ships were marooned on the dried-out river bank near the northern city of Novi Sad. House boat owner Radovan Segrt, who runs river excursions, told the AP that the water had withdrawn “some 15 to 20 meters (50 to 65 feet) from its shore”. “The summer season is over now, as far as boat riding is concerned,” he said.
The receding waters are also affecting nuclear energy production in countries where Danube water is used to cool reactors. In Romania, where the river’s flow has fallen to 1,630 cubic meters per second, around a third of a typical July average, authorities shut down a reactor unit at the Cernavoda power plant on Tuesday for safety reasons and announced another would be shut down soon after. Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant, which supplies nearly half of the country’s electricity, began powering down a reactor on Wednesday due to restricted cooling-water supplies, after two successive reductions in power output over the previous two days.
Much of Central Europe has been under a prolonged drought for most of the year, and successive heatwaves have accelerated evaporation and dried out waterways. The drought has compounded the strain of a summer of wildfires in Western Europe, where blazes in France and Spain have forced mass evacuations.
The record lows come a week after the Danube’s shrinking waters exposed a World War II-era shipwreck in Serbia, and Bulgarian authorities reported the discovery of a young mammoth’s jaw, tusks and femur on the river’s exposed bed. Scientists say the conditions fit a broader pattern of climate-driven extremes across the continent, with drier summers and hotter heatwaves becoming more frequent.
Authorities in the affected countries warn that the situation could worsen before it improves, with the Danube expected to keep falling through August unless substantial rainfall arrives.
Sources: AP News, BBC News, The Independent
Author: Europe Desk
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