A painful lack of rain and relentless heat waves are drying up rivers in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Many are shrinking in length and breadth. Patches of riverbed poking out above the water are a common sight. Some rivers are so desiccated, they have become virtually impassable.
The human-caused climate crisis is fueling extreme weather across the globe, which isn’t just impacting rivers, but also the people who rely on them. Most people on the planet depend on rivers in some way, whether for drinking water, to irrigate food, for energy or to ship goods. Recent satellite views show the extent of how much each river has shrunk over the last few years. China has resorted to shooting silver iodide rods to induce rainfall in an effort to give much needed volume to the Yangtze river. Thousand of miles away, the Rhine river, a major shipping river in Germany, has become too low for even empty vessels in some area. Droughts on such vital shipping rivers can be triggers for major recessions.