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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Soil moisture-temperature coupling behind climate shift in inner East Asia?
Lower soil moisture conditions are known to positively contribute to warmer temperatures, in particular during heatwaves. Inner East Asia is one of the regions where this coupling is likely significant. Writing in Science, Zhang and co-workers found that the recent coincidence of drought and hot temperatures is unprecedented in a …
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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