During the summer months of 2018 and 2019, there was a staggering shortage of water in central Europe.
Since then, there has been no significant rise in groundwater levels, and they continue to fall.
According to the “Independent”, a new study revealed that severe drought affects agriculture on the continent and leads to a significant shortage of energy, as the dry riverbeds and the slow disappearance of stagnant water severely affected nature and humans.
As a result, energy shortages in Europe also worsened. Without sufficient cooling water, nuclear power plants in France struggled to generate enough electricity.
Hydroelectric power plants have also struggled to function due to a lack of water.
To collect their data, the team used satellite gravimetry to monitor the world’s groundwater resources and document their changes in recent years.
They used twin satellites orbiting the Earth in a polar orbit at an altitude of just under 490 km.
These satellites provide a reading of the total mass, from which the mass changes in rivers and lakes are then subtracted, soil moisture, snow and ice are subtracted, and in the end only groundwater remains.
The distance between the satellites of about 200 kilometers was crucial to the project, and was measured consistently and accurately.
If the satellites fly over a mountain, the leading satellite is initially faster than the one behind it due to the increased mass below it.
Once it crossed the mountain, it slowed down a bit again, but the back satellite accelerated once it reached the mountain, and once they were both over the top, their relative speed was determined again.
These changes in distance over large masses were the main measuring factors for determining the Earth’s gravitational field and were measured with micrometer precision.
“The processing and computational efforts here are very large,” said Dr. Torsten Meyer Gore, a professor at the Graz University of Technology in Austria, and an author of the study.
The result shows that the water situation in Europe is now precarious.
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