Drought: A Dramatic Summer and a Bad Winter

This blog will be updated once a month with subjects that I think are relevant. Considering the last months events, the posts should be more frequent.
  • The drought in Sweden continues, and a one-third reduction in food production is forecasted.  The rainfall in the southern parts are only a fraction of the normal levels. 
  • Another consequence of the drought are forest fires are now estimated to have consumed 25 000 hectares of forests (MSB and the Coast Guard). Swedish firefighters are getting help from French, Polish, Portugese firefighters along with countless of volunteers. Still, the fires will probably keep burning for several weeks.
  • This operation will exhaust the firefighters', require a lot of supplies and wear out the equipment. The ability of handling large-scale disasters will be reduced for the short-term future. CONCLUSION: The firefighters and volunteers need to revover for months before they will be able to save the day again.
  • Hydro power is an important part of Swedish power supply. The dry summer will leave the resevoirs with much lower levels for the fall and winter. ASSUMPTION: The electricity prices will be high during the fall and winter. In worst case (a cold week with some power plants offline), some areas may be without electric power.
I will elaborate more on the energy issue in a future blog post.

For the food issue, the estimated grain harvest is some 4.2 billion kg, compared with the previous harvest of 6.2 billion kg. This is a drop of 2 billion kg. For a country with a population of 10 million, that is a drop of 200 kg per person. ACTION: Read the previous sentence ten times.

This blog will try to connect the things that are happening in the big world (macro) with the things that are happens closer to the individuals (me).  The fact that the food production is falling, the water reservoirs for hydro power are not refilling as they should and that the emergency services are fighting massive forest fires will have impact on me and my family.

Winter is coming...

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