During heatwaves, there is no rain and the soil dries out. This further enhances the rising of heatwave temperatures. But remarkably, desiccated soils also have an advantage: they reduce air humidity and make a heatwave less deadly to humans. Heatwaves and droughts are causing acute excess mortality and damage to …
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Increasing soil drought drives Western European summer warming
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. …
Continue readingA hot future for European droughts
Two studies that appeared in Nature Climate Change in 2018 give an insight into the future of droughts in Europe. Not only will higher evaporative demand lead to drier soils and less water availability, but the drier soils will also lead to higher temperature extremes.
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