Overview
- Independent assessments say the river’s flow is among the lowest on record, and Iraq’s water ministry warns it could run dry by 2040 without swift action.
- Scientists attribute the decline to climate-driven drought, upstream dam construction and heavy groundwater extraction across the basin.
- NASA reported in 2013 that the Tigris–Euphrates basins lost about 117 million acre-feet of freshwater from 2003 to 2009, with losses accelerating after the 2007 drought.
- Health reporting from Iraq describes contaminated water, crop failures and outbreaks of diarrhoea, measles, typhoid and cholera as water systems falter.
- Public interest in Revelation’s reference to a drying Euphrates has grown online, yet coverage notes experts frame the crisis as a transboundary water and climate challenge in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.