Germany
Expert: Drought initial situation was “incredibly unfavorable”
After the wet winter in Germany, why is it already too dry in many places? photo
© Fabian Sommer/dpa
After a very wet winter, there is again a drought alarm in parts of Germany. The explanation is based on information provided by researchers in the past.
After the wet winter in Germany, why is it already too dry in many places? According to Andreas Marx, head of the drought monitor at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, to answer this question you have to look further back to very dry months. For example, August 2022 was the driest month in Germany since 1951. “It is an explanation as to why the actually good winter was not enough to compensate for the drought: because the initial situation was so unbelievably unfavorable.”
The winter was actually “almost fantastic,” said Marx. “It was basically too wet since December, and March and April were also very wet. It wasn’t too warm in spring either. The situation was really good up until April.” That was also good for agriculture; the topsoil down to a depth of 25 centimeters and deeper had been well moistened.
Since May, however, it has again rained far too little. In a strip from eastern Lower Saxony via Saxony-Anhalt to Berlin and Brandenburg, we have the situation that it has been permanently too dry there for five years.” There the drought monitor is already turning dark again – an expression of an extraordinary drought, how it is statistically only expected every 50 years.
Special drought situation in the east
“The special drought situation in the east of the country can be explained by the fact that the climate is unfair. In the Alps it rains up to 2200 liters per square meter a year. In the central German dry area it is 450 liters. Where there is less precipitation, the Dry up worse.”
“The big loser is the forest. There has been damage every year since 2018, and new damage is expected this year, too,” said Marx.
Nevertheless, the climate researcher is not pessimistic about the future. “The drought is not expected to become permanent. Droughts never resolve in a few weeks. It takes at least five months.”
It depends on the rainfall in winter. “The drought music is made in winter. In the winter months there are no negative stressors – hardly any evaporation, the plants hardly draw any water from the soil. In winter the water has time to go into the soil. Unfortunately, it is therefore also unlikely that the drought will resolve over the summer months.”