Dry weather pleases beer garden visitors, ice cream parlors and people planning a barbecue. Foresters and farmers, on the other hand, keep an eye out for rain clouds. How serious is the current drought?
Rain has been rather rare in many regions of Germany in the past few weeks. Do the farmers who have had to struggle with droughts in recent years already fear for their harvests?
The situation is not yet dramatic, said Andreas Brömser, agricultural meteorologist at the German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach, the German Press Agency. Most plants would still cope quite well with the residual moisture in the soil. If it doesn’t rain by the end of May, that could change.
In winter it rained above average, said Brömser. “The floors were well filled with water.” But then came “an extraordinarily dry March”. Rain in April initially eased the situation again. “Below 20, 30 dry centimeters there is sufficient moisture in the soil from last winter.”
Prolonged drought is problematic
Andreas Marx, head of the Central German Climate Office and responsible for the drought monitor at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, also emphasized that drought has a negative effect if it lasts for a long time. Delays in plant growth could occur in regions with particularly dry soil. At this point in time, however, that does not have to mean that the yields will also be low.
An example is the year 2014 with an extremely dry April, but above-average yields. In addition, the situation in deeper soil layers is much more relaxed than on the surface. However, this does not apply to all areas in Germany.
Overall bottom with dark brown dots
“However, if you look at large shrubs and especially trees, the situation is different,” Marx told the dpa. Because for the so-called total soil, which also takes into account the deeper soil layers covered by the tree roots, the drought monitor shows dark brown points. This applies to Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Lower Saxony and parts of North Rhine-Westphalia.
However, this is not a new drought event, but areas in which the soil moisture has decreased since 2018 and has not been sufficiently replenished since then, for example in the winter months, explained Marx. In the affected forests, damage must already be expected in the summer of 2022.
Hardly any rain in the north
For around four weeks, the meteorologists have been observing “a very uneven distribution” of precipitation, as Brömser explained: In the north there has been almost no rain for weeks, in the south there have been showers and thunderstorms. “In the north and in the middle, the soil moisture is well below the values that are usual for mid-May.” In April, for example, only 25 liters of rain per square meter fell in north-eastern Germany and increased the already existing precipitation deficit.
This is currently not a major problem for agriculture, said DWD agrometeorologist Brömser: grain that was planted before winter already has deep roots that could reach moist layers in the ground. Newly planted crops such as sugar beets, corn or soybeans are more critical, because their roots are not yet sufficiently developed: “They do not reach the moist layers.”
Risk of forest fire “moderate”
In most regions, the risk of forest fires is “moderate”. The leaves are still green and not as susceptible to fire. In the next few days, the forest fire index in the east could climb to the highest level, said Brömser.
The German Forest Protection Association appealed to all forest visitors to be careful and responsible: “Observe the legal ban on smoking in the forest. Barbecues and open fires are prohibited in the forest” and “Keep forest paths and forest access roads free – they serve as escape routes,” said the forest protectors’ appeal, among other things.
Summery weekend again
The meteorologist does not see any fundamental change in the short term: it will remain dry at the weekend, there could be thunderstorms at the beginning of next week, but the precipitation will naturally remain local. “A nice downpour is not in sight.”
Rather, summery weekend weather is in sight, on Saturday with maximum temperatures of 22 to 27 degrees. Individual showers or thunderstorms are said to be only in the extreme south of Germany that day, as the DWD predicted. It’s supposed to be even warmer on Sunday, in the southwest even 30 degrees are possible locally, like on May 12th, the first hot day of the year. According to the forecast, rain should not fall anywhere in Germany on Sunday.
Europe also affected by drought
The United Nations (UN) presented its drought report just a few days ago. He made it clear how serious the consequences are when drought turns into drought – not only in the countries of the Sahel.
In the last century, 45 major droughts were recorded in Europe, affecting millions of people and causing total economic damage of 26.4 billion euros. Around 15 percent of the land area and around 17 percent of the population in the EU are now affected by drought, according to the UN report.