Where there once was water: 17 photos of the drought that gripped the planet (18 photos)

Drought is changing the planet. What remains of the lakes and rivers that have dried up catastrophically?





We are now seeing Europe suffering from abnormally hot weather. In addition to forest fires, high temperatures have caused drought everywhere. Portugal has already reported the loss of about a third of its pear and apple crops, in Romania the heat is threatening corn and potato fields, and in France, some departments have even limited their water consumption.

But all this is just the tip of the iceberg; we have long witnessed how drought is taking over the planet. In some parts of the world this is only a temporary and very unusual phenomenon, but in some places dry weather has long become the norm, and the disaster it entails is known.

Photos of dried up rivers and lakes and receding seas speak volumes about climate impacts most eloquently. Reservoirs have always been a kind of indicator of disasters.

The dry bed of the Sangone River in Italy, experiencing the worst drought in 70 years



Residents of Iraq visit Lake Sava: according to legend, it appeared on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad





It’s the same, but now all that’s left of it is a small pond



A dog walks along the dry bed of the Yamuna River in New Delhi, India



Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, which was surrounded by water twenty years ago, USA



Low water level in Lake Mead, which appeared after the construction of the Hoover Dam, Nevada, USA



At the bottom of the Cantareira Reservoir near Sao Paulo, Brazil



This is what the Krasnoyarsk reservoir looks like this year, which has become record-shallow



Cracked bottom of Lake Peñueles in Chile



A man stands on the shore of the dry lake Ceresole Reale in the Italian region of Piedmont.



Old ships on the dry bottom of the Aral Sea, Kazakhstan



Remains of trees at the bottom of the Runge Reservoir in Chile



Lake Poopo in Bolivia, which finally dried up in 2016



Lake Laguna de Aculeo in Chile, which has turned into a desert where horses now rest



Boat in the La Boquilla Dam basin in the Mexican state of Chihuahua



Floating barrier that once served as a fence, Lake Oroville, California



View of the village of Aceredo in Spain, which was flooded during the construction of a dam in the 1990s