Nuwakot in Nepal. The UN’s scientific advisory body warned in 2023 that ice-bound landmasses would become more unstable. Photograph: Sanjit Pariyar/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
The devastating flash flood that has ripped through the border communities of Nepal and Tibet
has heightened fears that the climate crisis is destabilising the
geology of mountain and polar regions, threatening millions of people.
Satellite
imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the
primary cause of the deadly torrent of mud, water and ice that tore
along the Bhotekoshi River on Wednesday. It swept away buildings and
roads and left at least 360 dead and 1,400 missing.
A
magnitude 4.4 earthquake was initially blamed for the collapse.
However, it is now thought to have been caused by the huge wall of ice
that crashed down on to the north slope of Langtang Lirung, a
7,000-metre (23,000ft) mountain, the impact of which registered a
magnitude of 5.2.
“Additional analysis of
long-period seismic waves indicates that the seismic energy was instead
generated by a glacial collapse and debris flow,” the US Geological Survey said.
The ice-rock avalanche pushed boulders and other
debris into the Lhende Khola River, a tributary of the Bhotekoshi River.
Water levels in rivers downstream rose by between 7 and 9 metres within
30 minutes, according to the International Centre for Integrated
Mountain Development, an intergovernmental scientific institution.
Scientists are still examining the precise mechanics of the Himalayan disaster, but many observe that glaciers and permafrost around the world are being weakened by global heating, caused by the burning of gas, oil and coal.
Flooding in the Bhotekoshi River has affected low-lying areas along the riverbanks and nearby homes in Nuwakot, Nepal. Photograph: Ap Tolang/Nexpher/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock
The detachment of a chunk of the glacier wall
came amid unusual heat that was likely to have melted the ice that bound
the splintered bedrock together.
Two days
before the collapse, the ground temperature hit its highest point in the
last two years, according to Dr Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist with
the British Antarctic Survey, whose team had sensors 6 miles (10km) away
from the site.
“These high temperatures would
have weakened the snowpack, filled crevasses with water and thawed the
bonds between ice and rock that hold these glaciers in place,” he told
the Science Media Centre.
A series of intense
heatwaves has hit the region since early this year and affected
countries around the world. Another factor here was the monsoon season,
which saturated the soil and swelled rivers.
Disasters like this were foretold. In 2023 the UN’s top scientific advisory body warned
that previously ice-bound landmasses – from permafrost tundra to
mountain glaciers – would become increasingly unstable as temperatures
rose.
“Every increment of warming will
multiply and intensify future hazards from cryosphere regions,” observed
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its sixth synthesis
report. “Floods, landslides and freshwater shortages from glacier
retreat and snow loss pose a serious threat to mountain regions across
the world.”
Average global temperatures are nudging closer to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Even faster warming is occurring in alpine and polar regions because the loss of snow and ice is removing the thermal insulation of the land.
Dr
Richard Waller, a senior lecturer in physical geography at Keele
University, said: “The progressive loss of snow and glacier ice results
in the surface being less reflective, so it absorbs more solar energy
and heats up. In combination with atmospheric warming, this is leading
to the melting of mountain permafrost.
“Think
of the high mountains like this as shattered bedrock glued together by
ice-filled joints. As the permafrost and the ice-filled joints melt,
then there’s the potential for these types of catastrophic failure.”
A destroyed building in Devighat, Nuwakot. Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP
The thaw is altering the shape, colour and
solidity of the landscape, creating or expanding glacial meltwater lakes
and, in the long term, threatening the origin of many rivers and the
drinking supplies of populations downstream. In many parts of Asia,
hundreds of millions of people depend on the rivers such as the Ganges
and the Brahmaputra that descend from the glaciers.
Scientists
have high confidence that glacier retreat is caused by human-driven
global heating. This has caused glacier collapses from the Alps to the
Andes. In the Langtang catchment area in Nepal, glacier loss rates have
increased more than fourfold since 1964, a study has shown.
TImeline of how deadly Nepal and Tibet flash flood unfolded – explainer
This has contributed to a loss of life on multiple occasions. A smaller flood hit the Bhotekoshi River in July 2025 and in 2015, the Langtang Lirung mountain was hit by an earthquake-induced avalanche that destroyed Langtang village.
As
emergency services look for bodies and humanitarian relief groups
mobilise for survivors, others are asking where next. Waller said any
high mountain areas with glaciers and permafrost could be vulnerable,
including the European Alps, Caucasus, Himalayas, Andes and beyond.
As
glacier weakening accelerates, Pritchard called for greater disaster
preparedness. “More avalanches and more floods are inevitable,
particularly as lakes grow in front of the retreating glaciers,” he
said. “Early warning systems are urgently needed to protect the people
living in these valleys.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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