Europe's scorched landscapes seen from space after summer heatwaves

geremiiah

I remember in 2010, corporate propagandists were telling us that the effects of climate change won't be felt for a 100 years.

bethekind

Climate change affects geographies unequally. Seems like Europe and the tropics have been the first to suffer, year after year, and with the UK losing that warm current in ~47 years, can't help but wonder what is on European minds.

delichon

Global fire emissions are on a downward trend, with the first half of this year at a record low in this century. https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/lowest-global-biomass-burni...

dwedge

The headline is a bit sensationalist. Scorched means burned not just dry, later it mentions that some of the images are scorched from wildfires, but that doesn't seem to correlate to the one shown under the headline.

snicky

I just came back from Hungary and Slovakia and it really caught my attention that the grass everywhere was just yellow. I wasn't sure if it's normal by this time of the year, but truely, both countries look like Greece now.

tills13

It's very disheartening as someone who enjoys recreational fishing that the river closures -- typically legally closed to fishing, but otherwise ethically closed -- are getting earlier and earlier. That is, if the rivers aren't straight up bone dry peak summer. I'm pretty young, too, so I have this, if not worse than this, to look forward to for the majority of my life. Not to mention here in BC we're up to three summers in a row where entire towns have burned down ... not a positive sign of things to come.

TacticalCoder

So in Western Europe we're fucked by first having heatwaves (and fires everywhere) and, indeed, every field around me is yellow instead of green... And then, when the AMOC shall start running amok, we'll be forever in extreme cold. Where should I flee?

delegate

My only practical contribution to fixing this issue is to upvote this article.. and write a message on HN. I'm in Spain. I really hope that after this summer, people of Europe will wake up and make fixing the climate their highest priority - at home, at work, in politics. We have very little time left, maybe a few years. I can still see news articles everywhere blaming 'climate change' and 'CO2 emissions', pointing the finger at the oil companies and the likes. But those 'bad' guys are not operating in a void - they supply the products which are in high demand from me and you and our families - our entire lifestyle is built around them. So what needs to change is our life styles, philosophy, economic order .. drastic changes. Consumerism needs to go, tourism needs to go, advertising needs to go, travel and logistics needs to be reinvented, industrial production needs to drop by orders of magnitude, everything replaced with healthy and efficient alternatives. How can this be done peacefully is beyond me, it probably can't. We've had precedent during covid, when the whole world stopped because everyone was scared that they're going to die. It's not so different now.

Andr2Andr

Side by side images of exactly the same places one year apart would have been much better than the images in the article - combining left and right part from 2 years. Maybe it's just me, but the satellite images mostly were hard to read

comrade1234

I think the cows are very stressed here in Switzerland. I make cheese every now and then - ricotta and paneer. It's simple. I buy the milk from a "milch-Automat" - farms around here (Zurich) have machines where you can buy a liter of raw milk from the farm for cheap. So, the milk I'm using is direct from the cows. I made paneer a week ago. Normally I can cut it up and brown it and make the edges crispy. But for this batch I got far less cheese than normal and it was wet - I had to let the molded paneer dry out longer than normal. Then when I went to brown it the entire batch just melted into a gloopy mess - that just doesn't happen. Reminded me of the omen.

GoToRO

good thing is not climate change, that would be really bad...

Markoff

no offense with their narrative, but the picture - Shipwreck has become visible due to Danube’s low water levels - actually shows MORE GREEN than year ago if you don't focus on the river, look at alla reas around, everything is greener, such a fail BBC btw. I don't deny many areas are dryer and more yellow than last year, but when looking at satellite pictures you should also take into consideration WHEN was the harvest, logically if harvest is earlier due to hotter weather the whole country will look very different from space and it doesn't say much about whether country is dry (though this is of course unrelated to some French palace photo which obviously ain't farm field)