As the longest river in the country, the Rhine is actually the pride of the German water landscape.
Not much of it can be seen at the moment - in places the river is almost just a trickle.
Heat and drought have dried up its bed in many places and even made it accessible for walkers.
The level near Emmerich on the Lower Rhine, just before the Dutch border, recently fell to a record low in the minus range.
Water still flows only in the dredged fairway.
Other rivers and lakes in Germany and Europe are also increasingly turning into rutted terrain - the water levels are also falling here.
And due to climate change, this will probably happen more frequently in the future.
In the eternal cycle of water, which describes storage and transport, low water levels are to be expected again and again in summer.
But what exactly happens and what impact does it have?
An overview:
The basic principle of the global water cycle does not change as a result of climate change: water is neither lost nor added.
However, the global rise in temperatures can lead to local changes in the distribution and intensity of precipitation.
Because warm air can absorb more water vapour, heavy rain can increase.
To put it simply: Enormous amounts of water from rivers and glaciers are currently floating in the atmosphere as water vapour.
As a result of the climatic changes, they may come back to earth as precipitation in other places.