European summers have become warmer in the last decades. To mitigate further warming, we have to better understand the cause of these increasing temperatures. In a recent study, Stegehuis et al. (2021) quantified the contribution of both decreasing soil moisture and atmospheric circulation to summer warming and summer heatwave events. …
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Future runoff changes in Switzerland
Runoff from the Swiss mountains is important for hydropower, but also for water availability in Switzerland and many other downstream countries including The Netherlands. In two recent papers, Muelchi and co-workers investigated runoff under future changes in temperature and precipitation. Runoff in mountainous areas is highly sensitive to temperature, precipitation, …
Continue readingA drought frequency paradox?
Recent years have shown that droughts can have serious socio-economical impacts. While the underlying cause of a drought (a lack of water compared with normal conditions) appears trivial, the exact definition is not. Especially since droughts can occur in different components of the hydrological cycle, each with unique spatial and …
Continue readingAmbiguous agricultural drought
Agricultural droughts, caused by long periods with little to no rain or heat waves, are generally defined as soil moisture deficits that are severe enough to negatively impact vegetation growth. A new study by van Hateren et al. (2021) shows that there is ambiguity between soil moisture drought and their …
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