Swiss researchers warn ‘mega-droughts’ are spreading around the world
Between 1980 and 2018, the global land area affected by prolonged droughts increased by an average of around 50,000 square kilometres per year, the study found.
Keystone-SDA
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: Swiss researchers warn ‘mega-droughts’ are spreading around the world
"Mega-droughts" are increasing worldwide - becoming more frequent, hotter and more widespread over the past 40 years, a study published on Thursday shows.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA
Deutsch
de
Schweizer Forscher warnen in Studie vor einer Zunahme an Dürren
Original
Between 1980 and 2018, prolonged droughts expanded the global land area affected by an average of around 50,000 square kilometres per year—an area bigger than Switzerland. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)External link reported this in a study published in the journal Science.
“Multi-year droughts cause enormous economic damage, for example in agriculture and power generation,” said Dirk Karger, head of the study, according to a WSL statement on Thursday.
The researchers explained that this has been caused by rising temperatures linked to climate change. These lead to greater fluctuations in precipitation and at the same time increase evaporation from the soil and vegetation.
Translated from French by DeepL/sb
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Life & Aging
Zurich: how the world capital of housing shortages is tackling the problem
Is your place of origin, your Heimatort, important to you?
Every Swiss citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin, but many have never visited theirs. What’s your relationship with your Heimatort? What does it mean to you?
In Switzerland more people are being referred to electrical therapies or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Are there similar approaches where you live?
Pope was a person full of respect: Swiss president
This content was published on
Swiss president Karin Keller-Sutter, who is attending the funeral of Pope Francis, says the pontiff was always full of respect.
Ex-sect member sentenced in Zurich for sexual abuse
This content was published on
Zurich District Court has sentenced a former member of the globally active sect "Children of God" to a partial prison sentence.
SNB chairman does not rule out slowdown in Swiss growth
This content was published on
Martin Schlegel, chairman of the Swiss National Bank (SNB), does not rule out a weakening of the Swiss economy in light of the tariff dispute.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.