Environment Agency (EA) officials are pumping water into low-flowing rivers, rescuing fish and re-oxygenating the water, while water companies implement the early stages of their drought plans. The National Drought Task Force of farmers, water companies and land users met this morning and urged people to conserve water, including changing bathrooms to showers, reusing water used to rinse vegetables and keeping water cold in the refrigerator to avoid opening the tap. “Don’t wait for it to happen,” said John Leyland, EA’s chief of staff, urging people to start saving water. “This is how the drought begins. Continued hot and dry weather may lead to more environmental problems in August,” he said, adding that water companies have sufficient reserves for the summer. It comes as the Royal Met Society told Sky News that drought is now “highly likely” for the majority of southern England and Wales. “Based on the forecast … we really feel we have some trouble ahead with the lack of rainfall,” chief executive Liz Bentley told Sky News. November 2021 to June 2022 was the driest in England since the same period in 1975-76, the Met Office confirmed today, and last week’s record-breaking heatwave has worsened already parched land. The dry weather has left most of England, apart from the north-west, in ‘prolonged dry weather’ status, the first of four drought categories. Whether the areas fall into the second stage of “drought” depends on when the rain returns and whether it increases more or less than usual. The last dry spells were in 2018/2019 and 2011-12. Read more: Where does our water come from, where do we use it the most and what happens during a drought? “Where the lack of rain has been more widespread in recent months in the southern half of the UK, that is where we are unlikely to see much rain over the next few days,” Ms Bentley said. Anywhere south of the Welsh seaside village of Aberporth in the west, on The Wash in East Anglia, is “really struggling with persistent months where we’ve had below-average rainfall”, he said, with the problem becoming more acute the further south-east you go. The UK is getting warmer as human activity changes the climate. While drought is not expected to become more frequent or severe in the coming decades, climate models predict that it will become more intense, intense, and frequent in the second half of this century. The Northwest tends to be wetter because it is at the leading edge of the prevailing weather system arriving from the Atlantic. Watch the Daily Climate Show at 3.30pm Monday to Friday and The Climate Show with Tom Heap on Saturday and Sunday at 3.30pm and 7.30pm. All on Sky News, the Sky News website and app, YouTube and Twitter. The show explores how global warming is changing our landscape and highlights solutions to the crisis.
