Speaking to Lusa, Nuno Loureiro explained that the situation in the region has shown a fall in rainfall and reserves for around two decades and that the Algarve and Alentejo are already experiencing desertification.

The professor at the University of Algarve (UAlg) warned that “since the beginning of the century, it has been noticed that, gradually, reserves are getting lower and lower”, in a process that “is largely based on the decrease in precipitation”, which adds to the increasing consumption of water.

“We are not having drought episodes. A drought is an episode with a beginning and an end, with a decrease in precipitation that can be perfectly defined where it started to rain below average, below normal, and when this episode ended. What we have is something that is decreasing regularly and is not reversing”, he argued.

The researcher, who has already carried out several studies on water resources, argued that, for this reason, there is a “perfectly clear desertification process in the Algarve, which matches all predictions and all models of climate change”.

Nuno Loureiro considered that none of this is “a surprise” and took the opportunity to ask decision-makers to adopt “very well thought out strategies for mitigation and search for alternatives” and to invest in greater supervision and planning.

“We are having some rain in the Algarve, and this rain is starting to give a feeling that the problems are being resolved, but objectively they are not being resolved. If we compare - and speaking of surface reserves, that is, in the six dams in the Algarve - the end of September with the end of October this year, we had an increase in useful water storage that was not even 01%”, he stated.

The UAlg researcher gave the example of the volume of water existing in the Algarve reservoirs at the end of September and the end of October, which went “from 64.5 million to 66.6 million [cubic meters]”, a value that “gives a certain feeling that things have improved” but which “translates into a 0.6% increase in useful water reserves”.

Nuno Loureiro specified that the Odeleite and Beliche dams, the two existing in the sotavento (east) sub-region, “rose a little, around 03% of the reserves”, but in the windward (west) “Odelouca did not move” and the three other dams: Bravura, Funcho and Arade, decreased.

“This demonstrates that at the beginning of the hydrological year 2023/2024 the same phenomenon is emerging that has already happened in previous years: the leeward side is able to receive some more precipitation, but the windward side cannot,” he observed.

The same source also compared data from the end of last October with the same period in 2022, stating that water stored on the surface in the region fell from 91.8 million cubic meters to 66.6 million cubic meters.

“This means that, at the end of October, compared to the same period last year, we have 6.3% less reserves”, he added, highlighting that the leeward dams “are better than they were at the end of October of the year past, but the other four are worse.”

The deterioration of reserves is also visible in the Odelouca dam, which represents “one-third of the reserves in the Algarve” and where the “current share of the dam, compared to January 2022, registered a “decrease of 15 meters in water height”, a descent that he classified as “scary” due to the weight of this reservoir in the total water stored in the Algarve.