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Sunken town emerges in Greece as dry spell dries up lake

From underneath the shrinking Lake Mornos in main Greece, the muddied remains of homes are reemerging almost 45 years considering that the town that when stood here disappeared underwater.

After a winter season of hardly any snow, a summer season of penalizing heatwaves and months of little rain and drought throughout much of Greece, the huge manufactured lake which provides water for almost half the Greek population has decreased to its lowest level in decades.

Day by day, the water decreases, said Dimitris Giannopoulos, mayor of the broader Dorida town, who said nothing comparable had been seen for 33 years.

Long stretches of broken soil surround the ruins of the lost village of Kallio, which was flooded in 1980 to create a. lake to meet the ever-increasing water needs of the capital,. some 200 km away. Bricks lie amongst mounds of seashells.

Greece's arid Mediterranean climate has made it especially. vulnerable to the effects of worldwide warming, which has gotten worse. summer wildfires including blazes that reached the outskirts of. Athens last month. Researchers state severe weather condition connected to. climate change is now driving the decline of the lake.

It is an alarm bell, said Efthymis Lekkas, teacher of. disaster management at the University of Athens.

We don't understand what will happen in the coming period. If we. have a rainless winter season, things will get tough.

Giannopoulos gestures towards Mount Giona towering over the. lake, which utilized to be snow-capped however saw none last winter,. Greece's hottest on record. On the lake's declining rim, trees. have handled a yellowish hue.

They do not have water. This has never occurred before, he stated.

Wells in the location are drying up and surrounding villages,. which do not take water from the lake, suffered water cuts this. summer season, he stated. A local firefighter chief stated the danger of. wildfires loomed as the forests became drier.

The lake's area has avoided around 16.8 square. km in August 2022 to just 12.0 square km this year, according to. satellite images released by Greece's National Observatory.

Water reserves there and at the 3 other tanks. supplying Attica, a region of around 4 million people which. consists of Athens, had dropped to 700 million cubic metres in. August below 1.2 billion cubic metres in 2022, the. environment ministry said.

The state-run Athens public utility EYDAP had actually begun providing. the network with additional sources of water, it said.

Previous homeowners of Kallio were amazed to see the village. once again, however distressed at its state.

I utilized to see it complete and state it was a beach. Now all you. see is dryness, stated 90-year-old Konstantinos Gerodimos.

His 77-year-old wife Maria chimes in: If it continues like. this, the whole town will appear, all the method to the bottom,. where the church and our home was..

(source: Reuters)