{"id":7962,"date":"2025-12-02T14:02:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T14:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=7962"},"modified":"2025-12-02T14:02:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T14:02:34","slug":"water-reserves-in-romania-decreasing-at-alarming-rates-report-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/?p=7962","title":{"rendered":"Water reserves in Romania decreasing at alarming rates, report shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Romania is among the European countries where water reserves are decreasing at an alarming rate, according to an analysis carried out by researchers from University College London in collaboration with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2025\/nov\/29\/climate-crisis-depleting-europe-groundwater-reserves-analysis\">The Guardian<\/a> and Watershed Investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Scientists analyzed data from the period 2002\u20132024 provided by satellites that monitor changes in the Earth&#8217;s gravitational field. Because water has a large mass, variations in groundwater levels, rivers, lakes, soil moisture, and glaciers appear in the detected signal, allowing satellites to effectively \u2018weigh\u2019 how much water is stored.<\/p>\n<p>The findings show a pronounced imbalance: northern and northwestern Europe, especially Scandinavia, parts of the United Kingdom and Portugal, are becoming increasingly humid, while extended regions in the south and southeast, including areas in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, and Ukraine, are drying rapidly.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers separated groundwater data from the total terrestrial water storage and found that it reflects the same tendency, confirming that a large part of Europe\u2019s hidden freshwater reserves is in decline. Groundwater accounted for 62% of the total public water supply and 33% of agricultural water demands during 2022 across EU member states.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we compare the total terrestrial water storage data with climate datasets, the trends broadly correlate,\u201d said Mohammad Shamsudduha, professor of water crisis and risk reduction at UCL. \u201cWe\u2019re no longer talking about limiting warming to 1.5\u00b0C; we\u2019re likely heading toward 2\u00b0C above preindustrial levels, and we\u2019re now witnessing the consequences,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>In response to this crisis, the European Commission developed a water resilience strategy to manage water as a resource.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The strategy aims to build a \u201cwater-smart economy\u201d and is accompanied by a recommendation on water efficiency, calling for an improvement of \u201cat least 10% by 2030.\u201d Given that distribution network losses range between 8% and 57% in the EU, the Commission says that reducing leakage and modernizing infrastructure will be essential.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"mailto:radu@romania-insider.com\">radu@romania-insider.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>(Photo source: Ahmad Marzuky\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dreamstime.com\/\">Dreamstime.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Romania is among the European countries where water reserves are decreasing at an alarming rate, according to an analysis carried out by researchers from University College London in collaboration with The Guardian and Watershed Investigations.\u00a0 Scientists analyzed data from the period 2002\u20132024 provided by satellites that monitor changes in the Earth&#8217;s gravitational field. Because water [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}