What is drought and what causes it

Drought is an extreme weather event that occurs naturally in the planet's climate cycles, so regardless of our actions, we will continue to experience drought episodes, on a shorter or longer duration, as well as less or more intensive.

Drought is defined as a dry period of time, without precipitation, which happens permanently in the planet's climate cycle and which can take place anywhere in the world. Drought, like any meteorological event, can affect us in multiple ways, our agriculture, our health, our economy or the environment. About 55 million people are being affected by droughts every year on a global level, and these episodes are some of the most dangerous for people and animals, closely with floods, for example, which can also take place anywhere.

Often times, drought causes immediate soil changes to the landscape, so that large cracks appear in the ground, which need large amounts of water to recover their properties and the longer a drought episode takes place for, the more water will be required for the earth to become as it once was. At the same time, water reserves are being depleted much faster and sometimes, we need weeks or even months for them to replenish.

Freshwater that we lose during drought events can't be quickly regenerated through natural processes, so that we need a couple of natural cycles to be able to use these resources again. At the same time, it is worth keeping in mind that, even though 80% of the planet's surface is covered in water, 97% of it is saltwater, so we can't use it directly for our daily activities. Of the 3% freshwater that we have on Earth, 75% of it is available in the form of glaciers, so we can't access that either.

Other causes of drought are upstream issues for the communities that live on the course of rivers and that take their water needs from those. Upstream issues, so those happening closer to the source of the river, related to the flow of water, automatically lead to a negative domino effect for the communities that depend on that specific water course for their daily activities.

At the same time, another important cause of droughts is the human factor, with people sometimes use more water than they actually need, especially during thermally-stressful periods, when water resources are vulnerable as they are.

The hidden dangers of drought

Rising temperatures around the world accentuate this phenomenon, so that drought-prone areas will experience even more drought in the coming years. At the same time, the planet's limited water resources currently affect 40% of the planet's population and up to 700 million people are at risk of losing their homes by 2030 as a result of severe drought.

According to WHO experts, between 80 and 90% of the natural disasters recorded in the past 10 years were caused by floods, drought, heatwaves and extreme storms.

Drought is a very dangerous factor for our health, as well, and here we aren't talking only about heatwave episodes, when people expose themselves to the sun without proper covering themselves or hydration. It's obvious that these also have a big say in our outcome and can even lead to death, but beyond them, malnutrition can also represent a danger. As a result of losing crops following drought, some people might be left without food, without being able to provide themselves with alternative resources easily.

Among the other diseases that can be caused by drought, we can mention cholera, diarrhea or pneumonia and the stress and mental illness can be accentuated as a result of exposure to a prolonged drought episode.

At the same time, drought also contributes to drying the air and the formation of dust and sand storms, which affect the quality of the air we breathe, which in turn can affect our breathing system. The most heavily affected are those people that have to work in order to maintain the social services and the infrastructure that we're all using up and running, while medical services have their own issues when it comes to prompt action in the case of an emergency.

The most severe drought episodes in recent history

In order to understand how disastrous drought episodes can be for our modern world, we will mention below 5 of the most severe droughts our planet experienced in the past century-or-so and which can repeat themselves, unless we protect our resources.

The drought in China in the years 1928-1930 had devastating effects for the population, when between 3 and 10 million people lost their lives as a result of this episode. In 1943, a severe drought hit Bangladesh, a historic moment that made around 1.9 million victims.

At the same time, 1.5 people perished during India's droughts in 1942 and 1965. Another 1.25 million lost their lives back in 1900, also in India, while in 1921, 1.2 people in the Soviet Union shared the same fate.

Still, drought might have "helped" pave the way to the modern civilization way back in history. Researchers that conducted studies on the African continent reached the conclusion that drought episodes that took place between 135.000 and 75.000 years ago caused a mass migration to other parts of the planet, this also being a very important moment in our history as a species.

Drought also played a crucial role in the fall of certain civilizations in the past, such as the Ancient Egyptians and the Mayans, which suffered terribly during lack of precipitation at some very critical times in their existence.

How we can prevent drought's disastrous effects

Even though we can't completely stop the occurrence of droughts, we can act in a way that we can mitigate their negative impact on our communities. The problem with drought is that it's not an easily predictable event, unlike tornadoes or landslides, for example, and their duration might span from a couple of days to even months on end.

Still, there are things that we can do in order to reduce the impact of a dry episode. Thus, the first and most important thing we can do is to stay informed when it comes to the risk of drought in the area we live around.

This next piece of advice is especially important for people that recently moved from one country to another, with different climate patterns, as it can help us understand if that area is generally drought-prone, when this event took place last time and how long it lasted.

The next thing we can do is reduce the amount of water we use on a daily basis at home and if it can be applied, at work, too. Generally, it can be a good habit to start using less water, as this will allow us to get used to the situations when we might not have access to plentiful resources and we need to start saving. We can start by turning the water off whenever we don't use it while washing the dishes, for example or when we brush our teeth or take a shower, even though it might not be as relaxing.

If we can afford it and haven't done it already, it's a good idea to start investing in water-efficient appliances, such as dishwashing and clothes washing machines. These can help us significantly reduce our water usage, without rendering poor washing cycles.

And if we have a garden we need to care for, we can start reading books and articles that can help us be more mindful about the water we use, without compromising our crops and we can even begin to use the rainwater we collect early on.

Given that Romania experienced high temperatures last year and we were struck by a significant drought episode, we can expect from this year to be a difficult one as far as precipitations go, but we can get over it safe and sound by staying informed and applying the measures above.