UN: Droughts, less water in Europe as warming wrecks crops

LA HERRADURA, Spain (AP) — “Herders and farmers have their feet on the ground, but their eyes on the sky.” The old saying is still popular in Spain’s rural communities who, faced with recurrent droughts, have historically paraded sculptures of saints to pray for rain.

The saints are out again this year as large swaths of Spain face one of the driest winters on record. Even as irrigation infrastructure boomed along with industrial farming, the country’s ubiquitous dams and desalination plants are up against a looming water crisis scientists have been warning about for decades.

“We are facing a drastic situation,” said Juan Camacho, a farmer in the southern province of Granada, as he looked hopelessly at withered leaves of avocado plants and their fruits, smaller than usual this year.

Not far from his orchard, the region's largest reservoir is down to 15% of its capacity following over two months without a drop of rain. And at least half of that, Camacho said, “is just muddy water, completely useless.”

Declining agricultural yields in Europe — and the battle for diminishing water resources, especially in the southern continent — are perils that lie ahead as global temperatures continue to rise, the world’s top climate scientists said this week.

Their conclusions are part of a report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Monday. The panel's periodic assessments inform policymaker decisions about how to prevent the planet from warming beyond the 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 Fahrenheit) already gained since industrial times.

For Europe, heat and flooding in addition to agricultural losses and water scarcity will be major climate impacts, the report said. And while European awareness of global warming motivates policymakers to do more,...