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Hungary·Europe·Climate·Natural Disaster·Energy·Nuclear

Danube drought exposes riverbed, cuts water supplies and cripples harvests across Hungary

Sunday, 16 August 2026, 06:25 · 1 min read

Record-low water levels on the Danube — the European Union's longest river, crossing ten countries — have triggered a cascading crisis in Hungary, where the river fell to just 14–19 centimetres in early August, exposing wide stretches of riverbed and unearthing submerged relics including a Nazi warship and a woolly mammoth's remains. Farmers along the river report losing up to half their harvests, thousands of households have faced drinking water shortages requiring military tanker deliveries, and the extreme heat forcing water levels down has compelled Hungary to shut all but one of its Danube-cooled nuclear reactors — its first such shutdown in 44 years. Scientists attribute the severity of the drought to human-caused climate change, which is warming Europe faster than any other continent and making prolonged heatwaves, which pushed Budapest temperatures close to 42°C this summer, increasingly intense and frequent.

Sources
The GuardianDestroyed crops, riverbed cyclists and a ‘Rock of Starvation’: how drought has devastated the Danube ↗︎
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