A new study shows that future ecosystem functioning will increasingly depend on water availability. Using recent simulations from climate models, an international team of scientists found several “hot spot regions” where increasing water limitation strongly affects ecosystems. These include Central Europe, the Amazon, and western Russia. Pinpointing such regions is essential: …
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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 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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