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Iconic Venice canals have run dry; Europe's winter drought impacts leave produce shelves empty. [1]

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Date: 2023-03-05

Map of shallow groundwater storage across Europe. Groundwater is a deeper resource for crop irrigation and drinking water, and it also sustains streams during dry periods. Unlike surface and root zone moisture, groundwater takes months to rebound, as it has to be slowly and steadily replenished by surface moisture that seeps down through soil and rock to the water table.

Only a couple of weeks ago, the Italian city of Venice flooded St. Marks Square due to a newly installed system of mobile artificial dams failing to activate. Many smaller canals have gone dry, forcing residents to take a long way home or walk through the muck—the gondolas that tourists and locals were beached in the mud. The city's canals provide transportation by either walking over bridges or by gondola. Venetians have been used to flooding for hundreds of years, as the ancient city was built on top of a swamp called the Venice Lagoon.

It was not a desirable location, but as the Huns and Germanic tribes invaded Rome, the choice was either to flee or be slaughtered. A staggering wave of refugees in "Roman cities such as Padua, Aquileia, Treviso, Altino, Concordia, and the undefended countryside” hid in the low-lying ground on the delta of the Po River. Over the years, decades, and centuries the descendants of the refugees made building strong foundations a prerequisite for the construction of buildings. But Venice is sinking into the mud despite those requirements.

The Po river and the agricultural fields in the Po delta ran dry last summer (I wrote about it in the summer). Seawater could work its way upriver and liberally salt the soil of Italy's food basket. The drought across Europe has not ended since the deadly summer of 2022. It has continued to wreak havoc in North Africa, France, Italy, and Spain.

What is interesting about the particular phenomenon in Venice is why it isn't flooded by sea level rise from global heating. Instead, the opposite is occurring. Interesting Engineering answers the question in Sejal Sharma's article describing why.

The rivers and lakes in northern Italy, specifically northern Italy, have been dry. This is because the Alps, which are an important source of water supply to Italy in the months of summer and spring, are in a 53% snow deficit compared to the average of the last ten years, according to the data combined by CIMA Research Foundation. It's a worrying figure. The Italian Alps, a key water reserve of the country, supplies the Po River basin, which is currently holding 61% less water than normal during this time of year. In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Climate expert Massimiliano Pasqui said: "We are in a water deficit situation that has been building up since the winter of 2020-2021". He added that Italy needs 500 millimeters of rain in the north-western regions over 50 days in order to recover. Venice is more commonly known for its annual flooding occurrences than drying out. In fact, there's a common annual occurrence in Venice called the "acqua alta" when the water levels rise and cover the low-lying parts of the city like Saint Mark's Square. So the current situation comes as a surprise. But there's another phenomenon that has the opposite effect, called the "acqua bassa" or low-lying water, which happened last week. Environment scientists have sounded the alarm that these exacerbated tidal changes have been brought on by climate change and are urging the Italian government to tackle the problem.

The link in the last paragraph is in Italian. Venice still floods as a direct result of climate change, from thermal expansion to the melting of Greenland.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/5/2156328/-Iconic-Venice-canals-have-run-dry-Europe-s-winter-drought-impacts-leave-produce-shelves-empty

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