For thousands of years, our planet, civilizations, and humanity have been confronted with phenomena that contribute to both their formation and development, and destruction. Echoes of cataclysms, natural disasters daily reach even the most comfortable areas of the Earth for living. One of these phenomena, characteristic of every era and overtaking hundreds of thousands of lives every minute, is drought. This is an indisputable fact.
Causes of drought
Drought is a natural phenomenon that is characterized by a prolonged absence of precipitation and a stably high air temperature, leading to the disappearance of plants, dehydration, hunger and the death of animals and people. The causes of such destructive natural processes were identified in the first half of the twentieth century. And global climate phenomena themselves were called El Niño and La Niña.
The phenomena that were given such touching names consist of a prolonged temperature anomaly, the interaction of air and water masses, which at intervals of 7-10 years make different parts of our planet literally shudder from abundance or lack of moisture.
Threats and consequences
In some areas of the Earth, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods rage, while others die from a lack of water. These terrible events with children's names, according to many scientists, destroyed the powerful ancient civilizations, for example, the Olmecs; in the life of a number of peoples of the American continent they provoked the development of cannibalism, which captured the Indian tribes in dry years. Now a prolonged absence of rain and heat leads to mass deaths, mainly in Africa, destroying the lakes of South America, causing serious damage to the agricultural industry of the North American continent and Europe. Therefore, there is no doubt that drought is a reason for humanity to mobilize all its forces, knowledge and other resources in the fight against an incomprehensible, but very formidable, natural enemy.
Hot summer
Drought in Russia also remains relevant. Every year in the summer months in several regions, the Ministry of Emergencies introduces an emergency mode due to the stable high air temperature, coupled with an almost complete absence of precipitation, which sooner or later provokes fires in vast territories. The year 2010 was remembered by the Russians as a thick smokescreen that stretched for thousands of kilometers. At the same time, forest and peat fires raged in fifteen regions of the country, destroying settlements and infrastructure along with trees. Damage to the population and the state as a whole turned out to be colossal. Residents were suffocating from smoke, and insurance companies - from fabulous payments.
Crop yields, as well as dairy farming, which faced an acute shortage of feed, were under attack. It was in 2010 that the drought in Russia marked a new temperature record, set 70 years later from the time of such an abnormally hot summer.
Autumn Drought: A Threat to Winter
Often drought takes agriculture by surprise in the fall. It would seem that autumn is a period of rains, the first snow and temperatures that are relatively acceptable for plant life. However, precipitation that did not fall on time often affects the entire crop, the areas of which are large. That is why agricultural workers keep abreast even in the fall.
