Severe, record-shattering heat and unusually low rainfall plagued much of the world with intense droughts this summer. In the US, more than 7,000 daily temperature records and 27 all-time temperature records were broken. In Europe, entire lakes vanished and hunger stones, centuries-old water level markings chiseled into riverbeds recording droughts and warning of the attendant famines, resurfaced.
The effects have been far-reaching, including water restrictions, power outages, signs of desertification, and, in Europe, thousands of recorded deaths. Science, too, suffered. Life sciences researchers in parts of the US and Europe tell The Scientist that they had to postpone projects—many of them, ironically, on the effects of drought—or otherwise had work disrupted by aridity and heat, and that they anticipate more problems as the climate crisis worsens in the future.
“There is a lingering thought every day that something is going to happen . . . it’s going to be too ...
