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.
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.
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...
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 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 …
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.
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.
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.
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
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!"...
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).
> The fish industry has been hit especially hard, with damage estimated in the millions of euros (dollars).
JFC, does FORTUNE magazine really need to explain what Euros are? It's the second most used currency in the world. You could have put random characters in place of "euro" and anybody with a half a brain would quickly realize it's "a thing similar to dollars"
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 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
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.
Legally? Almost certainly no one. Ethically? The corporate executives who deliberately covered up evidence of global warming, starting back in the 70s.[1]
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.
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.
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.
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.
> because .. inevitably .. this super dry summer means there will be heavier rains in October
What's the process here for that region? I don't think the moisture is waiting anywhere.
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...
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.
West coast of Norway. 12-15 degrees and rain most of the summer.
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.
It's so dry, even in tne Netherlands and north of France. Amazing how quickly it goes
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.
I think Hungary is supposed to be dry though? Not this dry, sure, but still.
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 …
Atmospheric injections of Sulphur is going to be the only answer.
The timing of this article is a bit unfortunate. It's been raining here (France) every day for the past week, sometimes heavily.
That's been long overdue. I really doubt a few days of rain would make anyone in France forget the rest of this summer.
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.
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.
EU currently emits only 5% of the globally emitted greenhouse gases.
You can cut all the city hopping you want and it won't make the slightest difference.
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.
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
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!"...
You won’t mind higher prices? Are you rich? Because most of us Europeans certainly aren’t.
Tourism is 10% of the economy, most of it is domestic or internal to Europe; most of it doesn't involve air travel or city hopping.
Note that this 10% is heavily skewed toward the richest, biggest cities.
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.
10% of an economy is a lot, you don’t need to lose much of that to hit the entire sector very hard.
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).
> The fish industry has been hit especially hard, with damage estimated in the millions of euros (dollars).
JFC, does FORTUNE magazine really need to explain what Euros are? It's the second most used currency in the world. You could have put random characters in place of "euro" and anybody with a half a brain would quickly realize it's "a thing similar to dollars"
The stupification of America is complete.
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.
I read it more as an uncompleted copy-editor’s note, more like (todo: insert dollar value here), than a banal reference.
That does not really make sense. Millions of euros is also millions of dollars. It's not an exact number, why would they have a currency conversion.
Because, when mentioning a monetary value in a US publication, it's always common to show the value in USD next to it.
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 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
This is what Europeans are worried about, while thousands of you die from heat warnings?
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.
paywall
Who is liable for the deaths caused by extreme weather patterns? Is anyone?
Legally? Almost certainly no one. Ethically? The corporate executives who deliberately covered up evidence of global warming, starting back in the 70s.[1]
1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...
Including executives that still refuse to price in the environmental externalities of their business practices.
And since we've all known about this for 30+ years, is it still their fault, or is it ours?
It's very scary. And if you're not scared by this, you need a brain implant with some IQ points
The thing that really worries me is if harvests start failing.
Not quite failing in the UK, but it’s hitting crop quality and yields hard, such that in many cases farmers will end up with a net loss.
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.
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.
Yeah in this case the cycle might be 5000 years long once Milankovich cools things down again.