Turkish Rainfall Totals In 2006 73% Below Annual Average - Istanbul Dry Since October - AFP

[hatrack]

With its reservoirs drying up and its harvest threatened, Turkey is in the throes of three-month drought blamed on global warming that has weathermen worried and farmers fearing for their crops. "We haven't had any real rain in the Istanbul area since late October," Meteorology Professor Selahattin Incecik of ITU, the Istanbul Technical University, told AFP. "Normally, December and January are the rainiest months in the region."

"Fresh water reservoirs around Istanbul are only half full and if it doesn't rain by February, the city will face huge problems," he said. "The authorities should have already begun to warn the population." Save for a narrow strip of Alpine ranges in the far east of the country and the ever-humid eastern shores of the Black Sea, nearly the whole of Turkey has been experiencing one of its driest spells in memory, courtesy of a huge anti-cyclone that just won't go away.

On Turkey's western border with Greece, the flow of the Meric River (Maritsa in Greek) has dwindled from 730 to 100 cubic metres (25,550 to 3,500 cubic feet) per second, officials said. That of the Manavgat River in the south -- whose waters Turkey once planned to sell to Israel -- has been reduced by half.

In Bursa -- called "the Green" for its lushness -- the sole fresh water reservoir feeding the city of one million, 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of Istanbul, is only eight percent full, local officials reported. In December 2006, average rainfall for Turkey was 73 percent below seasonal norms, at 26.1 millimetres (1.04 inch) instead of the usual 97.2 mm (3.9 inches), according to Weather Bureau figures.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2006/070126042808.9lc688tb.html

[kestrel91316]

1. That's ok. Turkey doesn't NEED any rain. It's a desert.

:sarcasm: