From a jetty jutting out into Loch Ness, Gordon Mangus casts his gaze over the calm surface of the water, towards the dry, rocky shore. He has never seen Scotland’s most famous lake so low for such a long time.
This 84-year-old man, who grew up near the lake known to be the home of, according to legend, the monster Nessie, is today the captain of the port. And what he observes this year is “rare” in a region known for its humid climate and for its waters rich in salmon, the abundance of which is now in question.
“We are used to rain but we are not used to having such dry periods,” notes Mr. Mangus, met by AFP in July after a month of June during which heat records were set. beaten in Scotland.
Figures released in May by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) confirm the octogenarian’s observations: the fresh waters of the lake, Scotland’s largest by volume, have reached their highest level. low for decades.
At 109 cm deep where it is usually measured, the lake has never been so shallow since its level began to be monitored in the early 1990s.
The situation is similar in other regions such as the Highlands, where a particularly dry start to the year worries specialists.
“Everyone thinks Scotland is wet but there are more and more droughts due to climate change,” Nathan Critchlow, the head of water and planning at the AFP, told AFP. environmental agency.
“We had droughts very rarely, about once every 18 years. By 2050, we expect very low water levels about every two years,” he adds. “Scotland’s climate is changing and we are starting to see the consequences.”
On the banks of the Ness, the river that flows from the loch to the sea at Inverness, in the north of Scotland, Brian Shaw wants as evidence of the drop in the level of the river the visible rocks he point at.
This salmon fisherman explains that the depth of the river has been decreasing steadily for years but that the decrease has been more marked for five or six years.
“Dry winter, very dry spring, very hot June and the river got smaller and smaller,” he notes. The consequence is a decrease in the number of fish, which sometimes die in the dried up waterways upstream.
“We’re starting to see these kinds of events happening all the time and I think there’s a real concern about the future of salmon,” Shaw said.
When water is scarce in summer, it is also when demand increases, with a rare commodity to be shared between farmers, fishermen, the population and local businesses.
The company SSE Renewables, which manages a hydroelectric plant on Loch Ness, for example, has been accused by fishermen of lowering the level of the loch by storing water to produce electricity. Society refutes it.
“Water is becoming a rare commodity in this part of the world,” says Shaw. “Everyone seeks to use water for their own needs”.
While the return of the rains has brought some respite to parts of Scotland in recent weeks, water levels remain low to a “critical point” in some areas, explains the agency Sepa.
The UK Met Office predicts another drier period in late summer and experts say people in these places and businesses will have to prepare for periods of water shortages and flooding.
According to the Climate Change Committee, an advisory body whose members are appointed by the UK government, the ten warmest years on record in Scotland have all occurred since 1997.
The average temperature between 2010 and 2019 was about 0.7 degrees higher than the average recorded between 1961 and 1990.
08/08/2023 22:04:23 – Inverness (Royaume-Uni) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
