PARIS.— The dryness of the soils in Europe is much less marked than a year ago, although the situation is very deteriorated in Spain, revealed the satellite data of the European Copernicus program analyzed yesterday.
The indicator refers to the dryness of the soil, which can be analyzed via satellite, and not to the state of the groundwater tables, which register historically low levels in Spain and France during this period of the year.
Between April 21 and 31 of this year, 27.68% of the territory studied by the European Copernicus service (Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean) was in a situation of drought, indicated the European Drought Observatory (EDO).
Its expansion is stable compared to the previous ten days (27.52% from April 11 to 20), the data showed.
The EDO also revealed that the situation has improved compared to the same period in 2022, when 47% of the territories studied registered drought.
But this image at the scale of the continent reveals important disparities between countries. In Spain the data is much less favourable.
The Iberian Peninsula suffered one of the five biggest drought episodes last month since the EDO began recording data in 2012.
A 79.48% of the Spanish territory suffered drought in the period studied, 64.94% was in a situation of soil moisture deficit and 14.54% in a state of alert.
The Spanish government announced on Thursday a package of measures for some 2.4 billion dollars to deal with this situation, which has serious consequences for the agricultural sector.
A little less than two thirds of this investment will be used to build new infrastructure, such as desalination plants, but also to double the reuse of urban water.
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