Heat wave and drought: The fear of the millennium of summer



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D North as you knew it no longer exists. You will meet people without sweaters, without umbrellas, and landscapes that look more like Huelva than Holstein, with dry fields, yellow meadows, crowded beaches and dried up rivers.

The summer of 2018 is developing dangerously. In a broad band of Ireland across Scandinavia and Germany to the Baltic countries, the green color has disappeared from the landscape. So, the north is the new dry belt of Europe: temperatures are three to six degrees above normal levels, since the spring it has barely rained. Many fields are already lost, trees are throwing their leaves, farmers are monitoring their grain at the time of emergency. In addition, there is the highest risk of fire. Again and again, forest fires break out. And already a year is being tried, which represents the worst drought for almost five hundred years: 2003.

At that time, during the so-called summer of the century, already June beat all the records of temperature, whereas the hotspots do not Were not north but south. Baden-Württemberg has had by far the hottest June since measurements began in 1881, with temperatures normally only reaching in Andalusia. At that time it was up to seven degrees more than average

However, to compare the two years, it is necessary to separate two sizes: the temperature and the quantity of rain. In terms of heat, the current summer is not yet at the level of fifteen years ago. About two and a half degrees, June and July are currently above the long-term average, which is net, but not extreme. In the same period of 2003, it was still half a degree more, then screwed a hot stuffy August, the deviation further until the end, more than 3.3 degrees. The particularity of 2003 was definitely the heat. In this length and intensity we did not know such a thing – which should however change: It followed the hottest July of the year 2006, the so – called summer tale, a wave of record heat in 2015 and a record September 2016. This year set new standards from the start. April and May brought new temperature records, but most of all: there is hardly any rain. "The fact that two consecutive months set new temperature records in Germany is a very rare event and only occurred in the last hundred years in November and December 2015," explains Florian Imbery of the German Meteorological Service. Nevertheless, the subject of heat 2018 versus 2003 still has no chance. It looks different when you add spring. If we compare the period from March to July, the temperatures in 2018 are already higher than those of 2003, but only a few tenths of a degree

In contrast, the drought has already reached the summer of 2003 : June and July were drier than they were fifteen years ago. And if you add the spring, the situation is already worse this year than at the same time of 2003. The extraordinary drought in Europe having started in April, too little rain fell throughout the country, in Lower Saxony and in much of East Germany. In places, not even half the usual rainfall has come together. The most dramatic is the situation in Latvia. As in Sweden, large fires are reported, and in the capital, Riga, since April 26, not a single drop has fallen. That means: In fact, this summer, which would not produce rain, has already begun in the spring. Scientists from the Center for Environmental Research, who create the Dürremonitor Deutschland, speak of an exceptional drought, the highest category. Many parts of the country are dark red on the maps, and there are more and more.

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