Climate change has revealed an unexpected sight in Europe’s Danube River: decades-old shipwrecks, emerging above the river’s record-low water level. Continued heatwaves and drought across Europe have hit the Danube hard, with the latest victim being a segment of the river in Serbia and Croatia.

In both Serbia and Croatia, the receding water levels of the Danube have exposed old shipwrecks, like a freight ship that sank in 1937 in Croatia and a German flotilla that sank in 1944 in eastern Serbia.

The low waters of the Danube come as a worrying development in central Europe, not just for shipping and tourism, but also for historic preservation of sunken ships as well.

Europe's Record Heatwave

Since late May, Europe has been hampered by an extreme seasonal heatwave, resulting in sweltering temperatures across much of the continent. According to the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe, the average temperature over European land in June 2026 was the second-highest on record for the month.

Western Europe has received the brunt of the heatwave, experiencing its hottest June recorded yet. Spain’s Fabra Observatory in Barcelona recorded a temperature of 104.9 degrees F, which was the highest temperature in more than one century of data.

The heat has also been coupled with dryness in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, where it has fueled raging wildfires, and in parts of Eastern Europe, where dry soils have exacerbated drought risk.

The impact of the heat and dryness is evident along the Danube. According to Danube HIS, the water level of the river in the Serbian city of Novi Sad hovered at around 5.9 feet on June 18; by July 20, it had hit a low of around -1.45 feet.

Shipwrecks on the Danube

Shipwrecks have now begun to show up in multiple central European countries as a result of the Danube’s receding water level. One ship is reported to be the Hungarian cargo ship Fulton, which sank back in 1937 as it was transporting coal to Novi Sad.

Hungarian media has also reported several different shipwrecks, including two WWII-era vessels: one outside the southern town of Mohács, and another near the northern village of Nagybajcs.

Three additional shipwrecks, thought to be ordinary cargo barges that were abandoned after running aground, were found in a dried-up riverbank near Mohács.

Climate Impacts on Underwater Heritage

River cruises and shipping barges aren’t the only vessels that could face new challenges as a result of climate change-induced impacts on Europe’s waterways. Shipwrecks and various artifacts at the bottom of rivers and lakes are at risk of degrading due to climate change.

Researchers are considering how underwater cultural heritage (UCH) can be preserved in the face of climate change — Underwater cultural heritage constitutes all traces of human existence having a cultural, historical, or archaeological character which have been partially or totally underwater, periodically or continuously, for at least 100 years, as defined at the UNESCO 2001 Convention on the Protection of the UCH.

According to an April 2026 study published in Climate Services, climate-related threats such as rising temperatures, intensified storms, and changing sediment dynamics can trigger degradation of materials that comprise shipwrecks and underwater archaeological sites.

Analyzing two shipwrecks in the Penghu region of the Taiwan Strait — one a wooden trade vessel and the other an ironclad — researchers found that increasing temperature and water acidity are the dominant stressors that amplify the risk of corrosion, biological degradation, and material fragility for both wooden- and metal-based underwater heritage.

Exposed shipwrecks aren’t just appearing in Europe; they’ve been discovered in the U.S., too, as was the case with the Brookhill Ferry, which was revealed in the summer of 2022 when the Mississippi River experienced lower water levels due to drought.

With climate change ramping up, shipwrecks may start emerging in waters all over the world, revealing once-lost relics of cultural heritage that will be in need of protection.

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• This article references information from the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe: Western Europe has hottest June on record
• This article references information from the Danube HIS: Station RS42035_HYDRO: Novi Sad
• This article references information from the Hungarian Conservative: World War II Shipwreck, Other Artefacts Found in Shallow Danube
• This article references information from a study published in Climate Services:Climate warming risk assessment for underwater cultural heritage: Quantifying environmental parameters on historic shipwrecks in the Taiwan Strait