"Climate Change" - Nearly 1,400 missing, mostly tourists, after Nepal-Tibet flash flood kills at least 270

 

A drone view shows mud covering properties after the flash flood in Trishuli, Nepal. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

 Nepal’s disaster authority said satellite data indicated a “snow-rock landslide” on the Nepal-China border may have caused the flood. Scientists say climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in the region.

For a prediction, read this 2016 article: 

 Entire villages swept away after glacial collapse triggers flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims

by  Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi, Sam Jones, Kate Lamb and agencies

Rescuers are searching for nearly 1,400 people, most of them tourists, who are missing after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, thundering down valleys, obliterating entire villages and killing at least 270 people.

Efforts to locate those missing – including hundreds of people from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada – have been complicated by the destruction of dozens of bridges and almost 25 miles (40km) of roads in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims.

Videos from Wednesday’s disaster showed a massive wall of water crashing down on the border as people tried to flee. Trucks were upended and houses, roads ⁠and power projects swept away in Nepal, while ​officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties” after a mudslide hit a border crossing.

Deadly flash flood hit Nepal and China - cinemagraph

 

Rescue teams have found bodies hundreds of miles downstream from the disaster zone in the Chitwan district of Nepal, near the Tibetan border. Dozens of injured people have been transported to Kathmandu for advanced medical care. By Thursday morning, the Nepali army had rescued more than 100 people from flood-affected areas by helicopter.

David Fisher, the head of the Nepal delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross, said entire villages and market areas had been wiped out.

In the affected areas, houses, trees and vehicles were submerged or buried in mudslides. Helicopters hovered overhead all day, helping to rescue survivors.

The power, volume and speed of the surging waters gave little time for anyone to flee.

People from the hard-hit areas of Nuwakot and Dhading were seen gathering outside a Nepali army training centre – the base for helicopter rescue operations – seeking information about missing family members.

Police were recording the names of the missing just outside the barracks gate. Mobile phone torches were their only source of light as the area remained without electricity due to damaged hydroelectric infrastructure.

The village of Soley, in Nuwakot, which had about 25 homes, was virtually wiped out, according to Nirajan Paudyal, a Kathmandu-based journalist whose parents and other relatives live there. Desperate for information, he travelled to the area on Thursday for news of his family.

 

“There is no update till now,” he said. “I fear there won’t be any update.”

Almost 600 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism ⁠officials said. Among those unaccounted were 177 from India, 63 from the US, 34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada.

Chinese state media said at least 558 were missing on the Tibet side of the border, of whom at least 260 were foreign nationals.

Police in Nepal said 270 ⁠bodies had been recovered by Thursday afternoon local time, while Chinese state media reported three dead on the Tibet side of the border.

Many of the victims were on a pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in ‌Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists among others.

Early reports from Nepali ​officials suggested an earthquake could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger ‌the floods. But the US Geological Survey later said what was initially reported ‌as a 4.4-magnitude earthquake was a seismic shock generated by glacial rock and ice collapsing and the flow of debris. “No earthquake had occurred,” it said.

amaged section of highway in Nepal after the flash flood. Photograph: Subaas Shrestha/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
 

An initial study of Planet Labs satellite imagery indicated a landslide of ice and rock triggered the debris-laden flood in the Lhende River, about 12 miles (20km) north-east of the Nepal-China Rasuwagadhi border crossing, Nepal’s national disaster authority said. Experts say the risk of such events is compounded by the extreme topography of the Himalayas.

People shared harrowing stories of how they managed to survive. “I started running. Then a wall of water came thundering down as if it was an earthquake,” said Bibek Kumal, a labourer who was working downstream from the worst-hit Rasuwa district, near Nepal’s Himalayan border with China’s Tibet.

From his hospital bed, Kumal said the torrent swept him downstream amid mud and debris but he survived by clinging to a mango tree. “Had there been no mango tree, I would ‌have been washed away to death,” he said.

Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor who was being treated at a small hospital, said: “It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us. As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher.

“I tried to grab my wife’s hand and take ⁠her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud. Four or five hours later, a helicopter came to rescue me. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud. She’s gone.”

 

Nepali soldiers carrying a survivor of the flash flood. Photograph: Nepal Army/EPA

 

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said UN teams and partners were mobilising supplies and personnel to support communities affected by the disaster. The US government said it would provide $500,000 in emergency assistance.

Tibet government officials deployed nearly 800 emergency workers and 150 vehicles as well as sniffer dogs and speed boats to help the rescue efforts, China’s official Xinhua news agency said.

The Chinese premier, Li Qiang, travelled to the affected area on the China-Nepal border on Thursday to oversee search efforts there.

 

The tour company Himalayan Glacier said 47 people, including two children, were missing from one of its groups in Nepal. Among them were 15 Australians, 10 Canadians, nine Nepalis, eight Americans, two Britons, two Singaporeans and one Russian-American dual citizen, its managing director, Sanket Pandey, said.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said his thoughts were with those concerned about their loved ones, and that getting information about the status of missing people remained difficult.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent. What is to blame?

Firefighters battle a wildfire in the Casaboli Forest near Palermo in Italy in July 2026. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

 

The whole world is getting hotter as carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning traps ever more heat, but Europe is heating up twice as fast as other continents. The consequences are increasingly deadly, with tens of thousands of heatwave deaths so far this summer.

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Why is Europe most affected by global heating?

Land requires less heat than the vast and deep oceans to warm up, so all continents are warming more quickly than the seas. But Europe is particularly vulnerable for four reasons: changed weather patterns, its closeness to the Arctic, less snow and less air pollution.

As a result, Europe is now 2.5C hotter than before the mass burning of fossil fuels, almost double the global average 1.4C rise. Temperatures in Europe have risen by 0.56C a decade since the mid-1990s, compared with 0.42C in North America, 0.36C in Africa and 0.27C in South America.

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How have Europe’s weather patterns changed?

Shifts in how the atmosphere circulates over Europe have led to more frequent and more intense summer heatwaves. This includes the worst ever heatwave, in June 2026, in which a vast area of hot air was trapped under a stationary “heat dome”.

Scientists are still investigating the role of global heating in causing changes in atmospheric circulation, but a link seems increasingly likely.

 

Dr Samantha Burgess, from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, said: “We see statistically significant changes in surface pressure patterns and other measures of circulation when we look at trends over the last 40 or more years, and on this timescale they are more likely associated with climate change than natural variability.”

The association may be the result of a changing jet stream, a fast high-level wind that has a powerful influence on Europe’s weather and is itself affected by rising temperatures.

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Why is the Arctic important?

The Arctic is the fastest warming region on the planet, despite having no land. This is because the white polar ice cap, which normally reflects the vast majority of sunlight back into space, is melting away fast. As a result, the darker ocean exposed by the melting absorbs much more heat, which then melts more ice, forming a vicious circle. With a significant proportion of Europe relatively close to the Arctic, temperatures are therefore rising faster.

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What about snow cover?

Most of Europe had snowfall in winter in the past. Like the Arctic sea ice, this snow reflected sunlight and kept the continent cooler. But the climate crisis is shrinking snow-covered areas.

In March 2025, Europe’s blanket of snow was about 1.3m square km below the 1991-2020 average, a 31% drop. That lost area is roughly the area of France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria combined. It was the third lowest snow cover since records began in 1983.

 

Why does reduced air pollution affect temperatures?

Air pollution kills millions of people globally every year and so Europe’s record of cutting toxic air levels in recent decades is unequivocally a good thing. However, cleaner air is also unmasking the impact of the rise in carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere.

Air pollution particles can reflect the sun’s rays, directly or by seeding the formation of clouds, meaning the heat does not reach the ground. Fewer particles means less reflection and more heat that is trapped by greenhouse gases. Lower pollution might even be connected to the increase in blocking weather patterns.

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How important is each of the four factors above?

The short answer is that scientists don’t yet know, but they aim to have an estimate next year.

Burgess said: “What we can say is that the importance of each factor must vary with season, with proximity to the Arctic important in autumn and winter, and circulation changes since the late 1970s of greater statistical significance in summer.”

The drop in air pollution is most marked in winter because of declining coal heating in homes, and snow cover is a winter issue. Winter warming in Europe in recent decades has been strongest in the north, while summer warming has been strongest in the south-east.

 

What are the consequences?

The rapid heating is leading to ever more deaths and more intense wildfires and droughts. Storms, intense rainfall and floods are also being supercharged by the extra heat in the climate system. All deeply affect lives and livelihoods across the continent and will continue to worsen until emissions reach net zero. Rapid cuts in CO₂ pollution and the rollout of measures to protect citizens are urgently needed.

The UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, said in late July: “The awful costs of this climate crisis – both human and economic – are now reaching national emergency levels. What needs to be done is clear: leave coal, oil and gas behind faster, scale up renewables, and protect people.”

UK to warn citizens to stock up on food amid threat from climate crisis and hostile states

 

The fire-gutted remains of homes on Quarry Park Road on 17 August in Stourbridge, England after a wildfire that broke out across the West Midlands. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty

 

by Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey

 Government resilience campaign aims to ensure people can cope in a national disaster, in order to free resources for most vulnerable

 

UK citizens will be told to stock up on tinned food and take steps to ensure they are prepared for national emergencies as part of a new government campaign to improve the nation’s resilience.

The new campaign from the Cabinet Office will set out ways people can prepare for extreme weather events and potential attacks from hostile states, including stocking up on bottled water, sources told the Guardian.

The aim will be to ensure most households have basic supplies and knowledge about how to cope in a crisis, in order to free up immediate government resources for the most vulnerable.

 

Planning for a number of disasters, from cyber-attacks to extreme heat and flooding, has increased over the past few months after a number of incidents both in the UK and across the world. The plans, first reported by the FT, also include an internal reassessment of government preparations for a military attack by a hostile state affecting Britain.

The Cabinet Office minister Louise Haigh, who is Andy Burnham’s de-facto deputy, is also understood to be coordinating crisis planning across departments in Whitehall to allow swifter assistance to affected communities.

Drought is predicted to cause food shortages. Photograph: Maureen McLean/Shutterstock

During his campaign to become Makerfield MP, Burnham spoke repeatedly about the threat of flooding to communities and the inadequacy of government planning and response.

Burnham convened a Cobra meeting earlier this month to coordinate the government’s response to the heatwave, amid a threat of spreading wildfires and drought warnings.

The government was criticised, however, for its decision to send an emergency phone alert warning of wildfires last week, which charities and domestic abuse survivors said risked the safety of people who might be hiding secret phones.

Haigh’s predecessor, Darren Jones, had said that work was under way on the so-called “war book” on how international conflict might affect the UK.

The Cabinet Office said: “Safeguarding national security is the first priority of any government.

“We’re committed to raising awareness of simple steps households can take to make themselves more resilient, as well as driving forward the home defence programme to build our country’s preparedness for various threats.”

England’s ancient oak trees dying in extreme hot and dry weather. Woodland Trust says trees struggling in drought stress, with older ‘survivors’ disproportionately affected

The Major oak with supporting poles in Sherwood Forest: ‘One of the main reasons that tree died is because of these extreme weather conditions.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

by  Pippa Neill and Safeerah Ahmed

 

England’s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer’s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland Trust, with trees and ecosystems unable to adapt fast enough to the changing climate.

The heatwaves across much of Europe this summer have had a notable impact on crop growth and plant health. To cope with the extreme conditions, many trees are undergoing “early autumn”, wilting and losing their leaves early.

John Parker, the chief executive of the Arboricultural Association, said: “The signs of heat stress and dry weather is visible.”

Ed Pyne, a senior conservation adviser at the Woodland Trust, said it was helpful to think of trees like a large pipe constantly transporting water, minerals and nutrients from the soil, through its roots, up its trunk and out to its branches and leaves.

“When the trees are losing too much water, it stops this process and that’s when we start seeing the leaves wilting and dying, which can give rise to this early autumn phenomenon where the trees are losing their leaves early,” he said.

Fallen leaves on a pavement in London in July. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Zuma Press/Shutterstock

While the impact of the extreme weather is widespread across different species, Pyne said England’s ancient and veteran trees were being disproportionately affected. “These really old trees, they’re survivors, but, like us, when they get old they get a bit less resilient.”

This was made particularly visible by the death in June of the Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees. “One of the main reasons that tree died is because of these extreme weather conditions,” Pyne said.

Oak trees are classed as chronologically ancient from 400 years old onwards, although many will have ancient characteristics from around 300 years. There are about 3,300 oak trees greater than 6 metres in circumference in England, and about 114 over 9 metres. The rest of Europe combined, including Scotland and Wales, has about 98 recorded oaks over 9 metres.

Sherwood Forest lost eight ancient oak trees in 2024 and 2025, and Pyne has identified seven in England and Wales that are now in a critical condition:

• Crow Leasow oak, Shropshire.

• Tea Party oak, Suffolk.

• King John oak, Devon.

• Enmore oak, Somerset.

• Lydham Manor oak, Shropshire.

• Old Knobbley, Essex.

• Pwllpriddog oak, Carmarthenshire.

  
  The Tea Party oak is thought to be in critical condition. Photograph: Jim Woolf/Woodland Trust

  He said: “When you get these incessant droughts year after year, it’s a cumulative effect which compounds across time and gets worse. Almost all of our ancient trees are struggling under these conditions. They’re dying of this drought stress.”

  Pyne’s analysis of mortality rates of ancient oaks found that half could be lost over the next 60 years. This analysis did not consider the changing climate, so Pyne believes the figure is likely to be a significant underestimate.

  It is not just oak trees that are affected. Parker said beech trees in particular were also struggling with the heat. “They are possibly going into decline and may die, which would be disastrous for us,” he said.

  Alexander Held, a senior expert at the European Forest Institute, said in Europe even drought-tolerant trees such as pine trees were dying. “Our trees can’t cope,” he said. The impact is varied, with some trees affected by the heat and others sunburnt from the sunlight.

  
  An oak tree in a parched park in Bexley, south-east London, last week. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

  Angelo Morgan, a director of urban tree management at the company Trees UK of Bromley, said historically their busy period had been the winter, when high winds and rain could cause a whole root system to come up. But now they were receiving an increasing number of calls to deal with “limb failure” in periods of hot and dry weather.

  “The tree’s vascular system isn’t taking up as much moisture as it would normally do and so a lot of the limbs become very brittle and a lot of larger limbs are failing,” he said.

  While forests are in a state of permanent adaptation, Held said the problem was the speed of change. “Our trees and ecosystems aren’t fast enough to cope with the speed of change. These changes will likely be a big disruption to our ecosystems,” he said.

Europe's scorched landscapes seen from space after summer heatwaves

The impact of the heat has been noticeable in satellite imagery

by Barbara Metzler, Mark Poynting and Paul Brown

 

The impact of this summer's extreme temperatures on western Europe can now be seen from space after successive heatwaves since May.

Satellite images examined by BBC Verify show shrunken glaciers, scorched areas left by wildfires, green fields turned arid and lower river levels.

And some landmarks have been affected, too. The Palace of Versailles, south of the French capital Paris, appears as an island of trees surrounded by brown fields in these images.

 

The EU's climate monitoring service, Copernicus, has confirmed that western Europe experienced its hottest June-to-July period on record.

The immediate cause of the heatwaves has been persistent high-pressure weather systems bringing clear, sunny skies and allowing temperatures to build, according to the Met Office.

But climate change, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, has been raising average temperatures for decades and making hot spells much more likely and intense.

We've taken a look at how the sweltering weather has left its mark on landscapes across the continent.

Rivers run drier

The waters of the Danube, Europe's second-longest river, have dropped to their lowest levels for 30 years in several countries.

This has led to unusual discoveries on the river bed, including the bones of a mammoth in Bulgaria and a sunken WW2 warship in Serbia. You can see the sunken ship has emerged from the deep in the right-hand image below.

 

And where the river snakes through Hungary and Romania, nuclear power stations have been forced to shut down or run at reduced capacity for some time because of an inability to use river water for cooling.

Meanwhile on the Rhine, some cargo vessels have been left stranded and river cruises have been cancelled.

Retreating glaciers in the Alps

Even the snow-capped peaks of the Alps have not escaped the heat.

 

And where the river snakes through Hungary and Romania, nuclear power stations have been forced to shut down or run at reduced capacity for some time because of an inability to use river water for cooling.

Meanwhile on the Rhine, some cargo vessels have been left stranded and river cruises have been cancelled.

Retreating glaciers in the Alps

Even the snow-capped peaks of the Alps have not escaped the heat.

In a stable climate, glaciers would be expected to remain more or less the same size over the long-term.

Dr Lander van Tricht, glaciologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, said in recent years climate change has led to "much less snow in winter and much, much more melt in summer.

"And if we continue this trend, then the future looks very dramatic for the Alps."

 

Wildfires turn landscapes brown

Wildfires have transformed parts of western Europe this summer, too.

More than 90,000 hectares (900 sq km or 350 sq miles) has burned in France. This is already its worst year on record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.

The largest fire in Gironde region, where the city of Bordeaux is situated, burnt about 42,000 hectares of land - roughly equivalent in size to the Isle of Wight.

Part of the reason this year has been particularly bad for wildfires is that land has been tinder-dry.

Dr Douglas Kelley of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology tells us extreme wildfires are becoming "more and more frequent" as climate change is creating ideal conditions, with higher temperatures drying out vegetation and soils faster.

Even zoomed-out satellite imagery of western France shows a striking increase in the browning of land compared to last year.

 

 

To assess whether 2026 is unusual we used the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a measure which uses satellite data to assess how green and healthy vegetation is. Lower readings indicate more sparse or stressed vegetation.

The NDVI this summer came in below a five-year benchmark of 2021 to 2025 across about 70% of France. Close to half the UK and roughly 40% of western Germany showed the same.

Prof Andrew Challinor, from the University of Leeds, said the images were "consistent with widespread water stress", which "does not bode well" given much of Europe's land is covered by crops meaning it could hit the agriculture industry and food production.

In the worst-affected areas, soil moisture is lower than on about 98% of comparable dates in the historical record, according to Prof Luis Samaniego, from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research.

And, he warns, even if rain returns, some of the agricultural damage may already have been done.

 Graphics by Jess Carr and Tom Shiel

Destroyed crops, riverbed cyclists and a ‘Rock of Starvation’: how drought has devastated the Danube

 

Kürti rode for 30km along newly-exposed beds of the Danube

 

 

by Lorenzo Tondo in Hungary. Photographs by David Levene

 The Guardian travelled 100 miles along the EU’s longest river, where some residents are struggling to secure drinking water

 

For centuries, the rock was seen as a warning. When it began to emerge from the Danube, beneath Gellért Hill in Budapest, it meant the river had fallen so low that floating mills could no longer operate, crops were probably failing, and hunger would almost certainly follow. That is why, in the Hungarian capital, where over time the boulder became little more than a legend, it was named Ínség-szikla – the Rock of Starvation.

Today, amid record-low water levels on the Danube, the rock has not only emerged from the water, but surfaced almost in its entirety, along with the sandy riverbed on which it rests, astonishing geologists and government scientists sent to examine it. And, much as the rock was said to warn, Hungary is now facing an unprecedented energy crisis that has forced the country to shut down all but one of its Danube-cooled nuclear reactors for the first time in 44 years.

The Guardian travelled for more than 100 miles (160km) along the banks of the Danube, the EU’s longest river, which sustains the 10 countries it crosses, visiting villages and towns where residents are struggling to secure drinking water and farmers are fighting to keep their crops alive.

 

Pócsmegyer

Last week, the Hungarian prime minister, Péter Magyar, warned that the economic damage caused by this year’s drought was expected to surpass that of the historic dry spell that devastated Hungary’s farmland in 2022.

István Somogyi has lost nearly 50% of his harvest this year

 While the full extent of the losses is still difficult to assess, István Somogyi, a 56-year-old farmer from Pócsmegyer, a village on the Danube, in Pest County, has already done his calculations.

 

“I’ve lost nearly 50% of my harvest this year and it could go up to 70%,” he said. “It’s gone. Everything has dried up. Since I started farming this land after the end of communist rule, I’ve never seen a catastrophe like this.”

Somogyi said the unprecedented crisis did not come out of nowhere, and that the heatwaves and droughts of previous years had already offered a warning. Scientists say that human-caused climate breakdown is making every heatwave in the world more intense and more likely to happen.

“You could see this coming,” he said. “The harvest was already poor last year. But we were lucky because the Danube stayed high. Despite the intense heat, there was still enough water in the soil. This time, there is no hope of saving our crops.”

On the near-deserted roads running alongside the river, families with children sought relief in the Danube’s shallow waters, while, not far away, military water tankers were siphoning water from rural wells, hauling vital supplies to the storage pools that feed the local grid.

 

Szentendre

Low water levels in the Danube at Szentendre

 Across the river from Pócsmegyer, on the opposite bank of the Danube, lies Szentendre, a town known for its community of artists. During the most intense days of the heatwave, some evening performances have been held by candlelight in an effort to reduce electricity consumption.

Aerial view of a long boat filled with people in shallow water

 Here, in recent weeks, vast, desert-like islands have emerged. The exposed riverbed is cracked like a mosaic of hard, dry clay, baked by suffocating heat that has pushed temperatures in Budapest close to 42C, with overnight temperatures hitting a high of 28C. Europe is warming faster than any other continent, with intense summer heat and prolonged drought being amplified by the deepening human-caused climate crisis. Extreme conditions continue to fuel wildfires and strain water supplies.

József Gulyás stands in front of stocks of bottled water being kept at the town hall in case of supply shortages
 

In some stretches of the Danube near Szentendre, it is now possible to walk through it with the water barely reaching above your ankles.

“Swimming and navigation are banned here,” said László Balázs, 44, head of the local river rescue service. “But people escaping the heat still enter the water, unaware it can suddenly drop into deep pools where they risk drowning.”

At the end of June, Budapest police (BRFK) said three people had gone missing in the Danube over a single weekend. Water police later recovered one body near Iváncsa, while searches continued downstream for the other two missing swimmers.

The drought and resulting disruption to energy supplies have also left some Hungarian towns struggling with shortages of drinking water. In a room inside Szentendre’s tourist information office, thousands of bottles of water are stored ready to be distributed, particularly to elderly and vulnerable residents.

 “About 4,000 to 5,000 households were left without water,” said József Gulyás, 62, Szentendre’s deputy mayor. “We distributed 25 tonnes of water and received about 100 emergency calls a day. We had never experienced anything so serious. Elderly women would hug the officers delivering water and burst into tears.”

 

Budapest

A geologist takes advantage of the low water levels to view the ‘Rock of Starvation’

 Driving from north to south, towards the Hungarian capital, Budapest, where the level of the Danube under normal conditions reaches an average height of 2 to 3 metres, and can rise as high as 8 metres, intense summer heat and continuing drought conditions caused the river to fall to a record low of just 14-19 cm on 4 August.

 

The water levels have fallen so dramatically that, as the Danube has retreated, it has revealed a succession of relics long hidden beneath its waters, including the remains of a woolly mammoth, a bridge destroyed after the second world war in Budapest, a Nazi warship and an unexploded British bomb.

Tourists and passersby look down over the side of the Liberty bridge in Budapest. The remains of an older bridge can be seen the shallow waters below.

 The water is so low in the capital that on 28 July, at about 4.30pm, Gábor Kürti, president of the Magyar Kerékpárosklub (Hungarian cyclists’ club) and owner of a cargo bike company, left his office in central Budapest, jumped on his bicycle and, in an unprecedented feat, rode for 30km along the exposed bed of the Danube, with his journey quickly going viral on social media.

 

“I wanted to show that if you can cycle along the bed of the Danube for 30km, it means that, because of this climate emergency, we have literally hit rock bottom,” he told the Guardian.

Riding his KTM X-Strada 20 gravel bike, Kürti set off from the mouth of the Szilas stream (Szilas-patak) and made his way across fine gravel, large pebbles, hard-packed sand and mud, eventually reaching the ferry terminal at Vác about three hours later.

“For many people it was an extraordinary adventure. For me, it was heartbreaking,” he said. “Cycling through parts of the river where, as a child, I used to swim or go kayaking, and which I could now cross on a bicycle, filled me with an indescribable sadness. It was like looking at the scene of a terrible accident. Throughout that journey, the scale of the catastrophe was unfolding before my eyes.”

 

Nagytétény

The Kis-Háros-sziget island nature reserve is usually only accessible by boat but is now reachable by foot, as low water levels in the Danube have exposed the river bed connecting the island to the mainland

 

Kürti took the Guardian into what, until only a few months ago, was the striking floodplain forest in Nagytétény named Kis-Háros-sziget, a protected area home to climbing plants, wild vines and several families of European beavers.

The river is reached by walking across ground that would normally lie several metres beneath the water. Here, one branch of the Danube has receded so dramatically that it came to an abrupt halt, blocked by an exposed riverbed left behind by the drought.

Its dry, clay-like surface looks like an image from a future shaped by the escalating human-caused climate crisis. Yet this is happening now. Passersby walk across what was once the river, their feet sinking into patches of mud. Kayakers struggle to make their way through the remaining shallow channels; many eventually give up, lift their kayaks on to their shoulders and walk home.

Hungarian authorities have been pumping water into large areas of the country’s nature reserves such as the one in Nagytétény, to keep marshlands from drying out as the drought intensifies.

 

Paks

Hungary’s only nuclear power station, in Paks near to the banks of the river Danube

 Continuing south, the road finally reaches Paks, home to Hungary’s nuclear power plant, its towers rising above the horizon. Here, municipal workers have been working weekends to keep more than 700 threatened trees alive and water the town’s flowerbeds.

 

Szilvia Farkas: ‘I have never seen so much vegetation dry out in all my years doing this job.’

 

“I’ve been doing this job for 18 years,” said Szilvia Farkas, 39, who is employed by Dunakom Zrt in Paks, owned entirely by the municipality, to plant and water trees and plants. “I have never seen so much vegetation dry out in all my years doing this job, and I have never worked as hard as I have this year to try to keep it alive.”

Dunakom Zrt uses its own drilled well for water extraction. In addition, the company is able to extract water from a decantation basin. The public is not permitted to use tap water for irrigation at the moment; instead, residents collect greywater and use it to water their gardens.

In the country’s more marginalised and deprived areas, the water crisis has compounded longstanding problems for thousands of people who were already living in difficult conditions before the drought, struggling with inadequate access to running water and sewage systems.

Géza Orsós Renáta, 43, who lives with her four children in a small farmhouse on the outskirts of Paks, has never had access to running water. Orsós, who also works for Dunakom Zrt, helping to water public green spaces drying out in the heat, has long relied on water from a neighbour.

Géza Orsós Renáta is helping to water public green spaces drying out in the heat

 

“Even in winter, we have to pump water and heat it in large bowls so we can wash,” she said. “Now a friend brings us water once a week. But it is becoming unbearable.”

Driving back from Paks, tall, swollen clouds occasionally gather on the horizon in the clear skies above Budapest, appearing to promise the return of rain, only to fade by evening, dashing the hopes of an entire country.

For now, people can do little but cling to the hope that the Rock of Starvation will disappear once more beneath the currents of the Danube, returning to the depths of the river and becoming little more than a legend again.

But Somogyi, who grew up hearing the story of the boulder passed down through generations, and who is now witnessing the consequences of the warning it was said to foretell, knows it will not.

“The drought will return next year,” he said. “That is the trend. And there isn’t much that we can do.”

  Zsuzsa Borbély contributed to this report

Dozens injured and thousands evacuated in Croatia wildfire

 

by Zahra Fatima

 

At least one person has died and around 40 others have been injured after a severe wildfire tore through cities on Croatia's coastline overnight into Friday.

The blaze broke out near the village of Lokva Rogoznica on Thursday evening, and spread quickly towards the nearby tourist town of Omis, 6km (seven miles) away.

Around 1,200 residents and tourists were evacuated, while 10 people were in intensive care in hospital, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said. Croatia's fire chief Slavko Tucakovic described it as "one of the worst" blazes in the country's history.

Croatia is one of several European nations suffering devastating wildfires during a summer of extreme heat and dry conditions.

Villages near the Adriatic city of Split were struck by the blaze, which coursed through pine forest-lined hillside, causing extensive damage to homes and cars.

Tucakovic said the firestorm burned through "everything in their path" as officials confirmed flames, fanned by strong winds, engulfed 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) in just four hours.

More than 300 firefighters were deployed overnight on Thursday, with crews sometimes forced to retreat as the fire advanced.

Footage shared online shows thick smoke and huge flames tearing through surrounding vegetation, turning the sky red, as stranded residents and tourists looked on.

 Some people were forced to jump into the sea from boats to escape the fire.

 

The wildfire has been described as "one of the worst" in the Croatia's history

 

Emergency shelters were opened in several towns along the coast, as evacuations continued through the night.

On Friday, officials confirmed that a body had been discovered in a burnt-out area as emergency services continued searching affected zones.

Later on Friday, Plenkovic visited the affected area, telling reporters there that the fire had spread at "lightning speed" and with "gale-force winds", adding that what firefighters had managed to save was "truly a miracle".

The commander of Omis Volunteer Fire Department, Viseslav Pesic, told Reuters that the blaze was so intense that people had abandoned vehicles "directly in the fire zone", making it difficult for emergency crews to pass through.

Bystanders watch as a wooden area is engulfed in flames during a raging wildfire near the town of Omis

Firefighters across Europe have been facing intense pressure and a strain on resources as serious wildfires continue to rage across the continent, fuelled by extreme heatwaves.

In Agios Vasileios in Greece, more than 200 people were evacuated by boat from a beach resort after wildfires raged across the country, while more than 500 residents were forced to leave their homes because of a fire in the south-western Landes region of France, near to an area already devastated by wildfires.

More than 2,000 people were also evacuated from the village of Gey in western Germany after a forest fire spread towards a village near the Belgian border.

Meanwhile, an emergency wildfire alert was sent to millions of people in England and Wales on Friday, warning of the "very high risk" of wildfires nationally, as firefighters continue to battle multiple blazes in the West Midlands.