Compared to the previous five years, there was significantly more rain in 2023. An urgently needed recovery for the environment: the lower groundwater levels were able to rise again.
The year 2023 was significantly wetter compared to previous years. The rain brought much-needed relief to the parched soils and groundwater levels. According to the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ), groundwater levels have risen again nationwide.
It was “a good year for the water balance,” says Andreas Marx, head of the Drought Monitors at the UFZ. The groundwater levels had already recovered well over the past winter and currently “the soils are soaking wet up to a depth of 60 centimeters”. In Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, the soil at a depth of up to two meters is as wet as it is statistically only every ten years. In eastern Germany, especially in Brandenburg, Saxony and the north of Saxony-Anhalt, the groundwater level is rising again.
Summers that have been significantly too dry since 2018
The higher amounts of rain this year were urgently needed for the environment. The summer months in the previous five years were significantly too dry, especially the extreme drought summer of 2018. During this time, there was a lack of up to 50 percent of precipitation per year, and the high temperatures and the associated faster evaporation of moisture also resulted in drier soil.
The research network “Correctiv” sounded the alarm in May: groundwater in many places in Germany had fallen to its lowest level in more than 30 years.
Normal level not yet reached
The UFZ’s drought monitor also shows: There hasn’t been enough rain this year for groundwater levels to rise back to normal levels – despite the amount of rain sometimes being higher than it has been for decades.
For example, the German Weather Service reported that March 2023 was the wettest March in Germany in 22 years. And the autumn months from September to the end of November were also the rainiest since 2002. During this time there was an average of around 257 liters of precipitation per square meter – around 40 percent more than in the reference period 1961 to 1990.