Drought, Lake Garda at historic lows for 70 years

Lake Garda, the largest Italian lake, has reached its lowest level since 1953: it is now only 45.8 centimeters above hydrometric zero, i.e. the altitude above mean sea level established as a conventional reference for this basin, compared to an average of 109 centimeters over the last 70 years. This is indicated by the data from the Sentinel-2 satellite, in the context of the European Drought Observatory of the Copernicus programme, managed by the European Commission and the European Space Agency.

The new snapshot of the lake captured by satellites adds to the others that testify to the risk of drought in Italy and in Europe: the photograph of the Po taken by the Cosmo-SkyMed constellation, by the Italian Space Agency and the Ministry of Defence, is from a few weeks ago. which testifies to the changes that have occurred in the river due to drought. Similarly, images from the European Space Agency’s Smos satellite show that, in much of south-western Europe, soil moisture is below average, due to a particularly dry winter and the second warmest ever registered.