The central Mediterranean carries the strongest drying signal that climate models agree on anywhere in Europe. Ten separate droughts have been detected here since 1980, more than any other region in this record, and the deepest of them, in 2017-18, reached −2.7. At the end of 2024 the region sits in drought again, the index at −1.9, so this is not a historical trend but a present condition.
The longest event ran fifteen months from January 2022, and it showed what a modern Mediterranean drought costs. The Po fell to its lowest flow in around two centuries, the Rhine's barges were part-loaded as gauges dropped, Italian hydropower slumped by roughly a third, and in the region's quiet insured channel, clay-shrink subsidence claims reached records in France and Italy. The deficit arrived slowly and left through every door at once.