Thinking about taking a cruise down the Rhine? Don’t wait too long; it’s drying up. Indeed, water levels on the Rhine, one of the most important rivers in Europe, if not the world, hit 12-year lows last summer, with low points continuing up to the end of the year. At shallow points, river traffic ground to a halt for a month.
The source of the Rhine lies high in the Swiss Alps; the river then runs through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, before emptying into the sea at Rotterdam. It runs past medieval castles, hillside vineyards, and throbbing industrial centers that feed economic growth throughout the world. It carries ore ships, cargo barges, commuter ferries, tourist boats, cruise ships – as well as many recreational cruising boats.
The Rhine is fed by glaciers high in the Alps. But the glaciers are melting. Alpine ice flows shrank 28 percent from 1973 to 2010, the last time the Swiss government made a measurement. Experts think the total decline is about 35 percent now.
“The Alps are warming at an even faster rate as snow and ice melts,” Dr. Wilfried Hagg, a glacier expert at Munich University, told Bloomberg. “A warming climate means that incidents like the low river levels this summer are more likely to occur.”
“You can see the water levels are lower each year,” said Kevin Krebs who added extra flotation to his 150-ton car ferry so it could cross the river near Kaub, near the outcropping named for the legendary siren Lorelei. “It’s scary to watch the climate changing.” Read more:
