The drought summer of 2022 is hampering shipping traffic on German waterways. An end to the extreme low water is not in sight. What is the situation on the Rhine, Main and Danube? A look at the ntv.de map shows the current measurement data.
The precipitation of the past few days in the south and west of Germany is providing a temporary relief: the water levels on the Rhine, Germany's most important waterway, are rising again. However, inland waterway shippers, industrial planners, logisticians and power plant operators cannot breathe a sigh of relief yet. The seasonally lowest water levels over the course of the year are usually not recorded until October.
In short: the thunderstorm fronts that passed through in August were by no means sufficient to fundamentally change the situation in the Rhine, Main and Danube catchment areas. At the beginning of the week, the water level in Cologne was 94 centimeters again - an increase of 14 centimeters compared to the previous day. According to experts, however, this should only be a temporary increase in the water level.
Further down the river, in Düsseldorf, the water level recently only rose by six to 44 centimetres. Further north, the amounts of water flowing in from the Upper Rhine have not yet arrived. In Emmerich, the water level initially stagnated at 3 centimeters in the morning after the historic low of the past week. This means that river boatmen can only load their freighters and barges to a limited extent.
Despite the positive trend, the Waterways and Shipping Authority does not expect any sustained improvement in water levels in the foreseeable future. It is said that the water levels should initially continue to recover. After the wave coming from the Upper Rhine has passed, it can be assumed that they will sink again.
The water levels in the rivers are of crucial importance for the smooth movement of goods in Germany. If the water level at key points such as Kaub on the Rhine falls below certain thresholds, the water depth in the fairways is no longer sufficient to fully load container or bulk freighters. Freight traffic on the waterways only runs to a limited extent at low tide - or, in the worst case, has to be stopped altogether. Industrial companies then get fewer raw materials, power plants no coal. Road and rail cannot compensate for the required quantities in the short term.
The Rhine is by far the most important and busiest inland waterway in Europe. It connects seaports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp with the industrial regions in the hinterland, in the Rhine-Main area, in the Upper Rhine Valley and down into Switzerland. Around 80 percent of goods traffic in German inland waterways travel via this "European trunk road", as the Federal Association of German Inland Waterways (BDB) puts it. "The Lower Rhine is used by almost 200,000 ships every year. That is an average of around 550 ships per day."
The German waterway network extends far beyond the Rhine and covers a total of around 6,500 kilometers. Just under a quarter of these are man-made canals such as the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. Around 42 percent of the route network is made up of the so-called "regulated" river sections. As with the canals, the water level in these stretches can be kept at a constant level by the supply from reservoirs - as long as enough water can be held back.
The remaining third consists of largely free-flowing rivers such as the Oder, Elbe, Havel, Weser and Rhine. The water level there depends on the amount of precipitation in the river catchment areas on the upper reaches. In the case of the Rhine, these are the western Alps in particular. If too little snow remains there in winter, the meltwater flows will be lower during the summer. In unusually dry summers, the water level then drops dramatically.
