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Iraq: Levels of Tigris and Euphrates Plunge in South

People collect water for their animals from the al-Thirma river in Diwaniya, Iraq, October 11 2022. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani
People collect water for their animals from the al-Thirma river in Diwaniya, Iraq, October 11 2022. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani
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Iraq: Levels of Tigris and Euphrates Plunge in South

People collect water for their animals from the al-Thirma river in Diwaniya, Iraq, October 11 2022. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani
People collect water for their animals from the al-Thirma river in Diwaniya, Iraq, October 11 2022. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers have witnessed a sharp decrease in their levels in the south of the country, officials said Sunday, pledging to take urgent measures to ease water shortages.

In Nasiriyah, capital of the southern province of Dhi Qar, an AFP photographer saw the river bed of the mighty Euphrates dry in patches.

The water ministry blamed the situation in some southern provinces on "the low quantity of water reaching Iraq from neighboring Türkiye".

"This has triggered a sharp drop in the country's water reserves," it said in a statement.

The Tigris and the Euphrates both have their source in Türkiye, and authorities in Iraq have long accused the Ankara government of withholding water in dams that choke the rivers, dramatically reducing flows into Iraq.

Iraqi authorities also accuse farmers of abusing water supplies and flouting restrictions to irrigate their lands.

Water scarcity hitting farming and food security are already among the "main drivers of rural-to-urban migration" in Iraq, the UN and several non-government groups said in June 2022.

According to official Iraqi statistics from last year, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.

Water ministry spokesman Khaled Chamal said Sunday that Iraq was getting only 30 percent of the water it expected from the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Iraq regularly asks Türkiye to release more water, and has imposed measures to ration water for agriculture and domestic use.

Water is also often held back in dams in Iraq's north, triggering anger among residents in the south.

Chamal told AFP the latest drop in water levels in both the Tigris and Euphrates in the country's south was "temporary".

Authorities will increase levels by releasing water from Iraqi dams in the northern areas of Mosul, Dukan and Darbandikhan, he added.

"There should be positive results within the next two days," he said.

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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

Top minds at the world's largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.

The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva — published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase — planned for 2070 — that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, The AP news reported.

“History of physics tells that when there is more data, the human ingenuity is able to extract more information than originally expected,” Chiarelli, who was not involved in the plans, said in an e-mail.

For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been making plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.

“Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today,” said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman. “When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.”

The blueprint lays out the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and project cost. Independent experts will take a look before CERN's two dozen member countries decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about $16 billion).

CERN officials tout the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind.

Outside experts point to the promise of learning more about the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that has been controversially dubbed “the God particle,” which helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.

Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson — the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.

“This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,” Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, said in an e-mail.

The new collider “provides an exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage,” said Toback, who was not affiliated with the plans, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011.

CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the plans considered at least 100 scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 91-kilometer circumference at an average depth of 200 meters (656 feet). The tunnel would be about 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, CERN said.