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Almost half of Europe’s soil is dryer than normal
- StavrosK 7y agoI see that Greece's soil is wetter than normal, that must be because we've been getting atypical rains, almost tropical (including an unprecedented hurricane!). At least we haven't been getting heat waves, I guess.
- toyg 7y agoTropical is going to be the new normal in the Med basin. Southern Italy has seen torrential rains multiple times a year, for several years now. That's the nice scenario anyway. The not-so-nice one is the desertification of everything not on the coast.
- Bombthecat 7y agoWell, I dont know why, call it a gut feeling or whatever. But I suspect that germany and maybe even whole Europe gets weather like Texas (dry rainy, hot)
- arpa 7y agoMost of these dry areas on the map are pretty mountainous/significantly higher elevation. Have no idea how that makes things different, but it still strikes me as a significant point to consider when interpreting the data.
- pilsetnieks 7y agoIt does not coincide with elevation (see an elevation map of Europe: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/elevation-map-of-europe https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/elevation-ma...). Finland, the Baltics, Netherlands, Denmark, England, South of Sweden, North of France and Germany are pretty low. Italy, Greece and Turkey are all higher elevated and they are wetter than normal.
- pimmen 7y agoAnd Norway is almost completely mountains, yet most of their soil doesn't seem too badly affected.
- spargus 7y ago... and the other half is wetter than normal. News at 11.
- j-pb 7y agoSo you're saying, that neither are suitable for farming anymore? Scary stuff.
- mappu 7y agoThat's not true, you overlooked the "about as wet as normal" population.
- mtgx 7y agoYou don't think anything will be disrupted if say Germany becomes the next Sahara and Poland turns into a tropical jungle?
- joaodlf 7y agoI have just received an environmental report for a property I am hoping to buy, which flagged up increased risk of subsidence. This is due to clay in the soil - which expands/contracts depending on temperature and water content. This is very common in south of the UK, and usually doesn't have too much risk involved (especially if the foundations were built under soil considerations) but I wonder what impact this might have in the close future, with temperatures soaring and so many old buildings/homes over 100 years old. Climate change will impact on things that don’t even cross our minds.
- mschuster91 7y agoIt may very well happen that the same thing happens now with the top soil as with groundwater - once the water is gone and the ground is dry, the weight of everything above it will settle down and compress the lowest parts of the ground - rinse and repeat and you suddenly have soil which is not capable of storing or even buffering water, which means a massive risk increase for flash floods at one side and a lack of drinking water on the other side. For those wondering what I'm talking about: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/land-subsidence?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/scie...
- mariushn 7y agoMay I please get that report as a sample? I'm looking into how to make easier to produce such reports. My email is in profile. Thanks!
- joaodlf 7y agoHi, I can't really share the report itself (way too much of my own data in it), but the section on subsidence risk comes directly from this: http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain3d/index.html http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain3d/index.html
- colechristensen 7y agoThe headline is a meaningless tautology. In a "perfectly normal" year half of soil would be drier than normal, half would be wetter than normal, and none would be exactly normal. The most reasonable way to interpret the headline would be to say soil is slightly wetter than normal, which is obviously not the intended message.
- zemvpferreira 7y agoNormal meaning the historical normal of course, not the strict mathematical term. Let’s not be purposely obtuse.
- tomxor 7y agoThe issue is not ambiguity it's quantification - The title doesn't even attempt to quantify the difference.
- taneq 7y agoWell the strict mathematical term doesn't even make sense because a scalar can't be perpendicular. Unless you're claiming the moisture is imaginary, I guess...
- LaGrange 7y agoJudging by the replies in this thread, I fully expect someone to show up and explain that the soil is in fact perfectly sane.
- barney54 7y agoIf you would like additional context, here’s the U.S. drought monitor which shows very little drought currently in the United States. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
- hwillis 7y agoDraught is an extremely noisy measurement. Because California got some unexpected but not unprecedented rain, draught on average is way down. However many parts of the US are also extremely abnormally dry- even if they aren't pushed into full on draught: https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/09/01/driest-boston-summer https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/09/01/driest-boston-summer It doesn't even matter if the dryness has no negative effect whatsoever (which it certainly does), because it's a measurement of a trend and it WILL eventually cause issues.
- toyg 7y agoPersonally, I've reached a point where I think changes are irreversible - there is no point trying to persuade the world to down tools, because the developing world is not going to listen (understandably so) and it's probably too late anyway (changes originally predicted by models to happen around 2070 are already here). From now on, we just have to put our collective minds to preparedness and countering: we will have to manage the excess water and heat as best as we can, and accept populations will be displaced. Unlike with medieval plagues, we understand this problem and most of its effects. We can deal with it, as long as we don't deny it nor use it to push unrealistic beliefs.
- _Microft 7y agoSorry to be so blunt but fatalism is a pretty convenient thing. It dispenses one from having to put up a fight and saves one from any efforts that this might entail. I don't like this attitude as it only gets in the way of others who do not give up easily.
- anovikov 7y agoSurprised to see that there are places in Cyprus where the soil is wetter than normal. I thought i live in a semi-desert. In addition, the climate is wetter in the southwest areas here (near Paphos) and dryer northeast, map shows it other way around. For example, bananas are commericaly grown around Paphos but won't be a viable cash crop east of Limassol.
- hwillis 7y agoThat's because its relative to location. The map tracks anomalies, not differences from a pan-european historical average single value.
- hannob 7y agoI have some issues with takes like this headline. It's not "dryer than normal". It's "dry like the new normal". Also "lower end of dryness of tomorrows normal". Climate change is happening. It's a bad take to make it sound like something's going back to a "normal" that will probably never happen again. What is "normal" is changing and we need to think how to deal with this, not consider it an anomaly.
- tasuki 7y agoI think the headline is just trying to be objective and let the readers come to their own conclusions. Climate change has always been happening. What is "normal" has always been changing. The Azolla event led to the decrease of atmospheric CO2 from 3500ppm to 650ppm over the period of 800k years. Humanity has (so far) increased atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 400ppm. Yes, we're faster than Azolla. But we'll probably stop or be stopped before we reach 3500ppm. One of my favourite recent HN comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496507): > So, this is all a part of natural cycle. Humans are part of life on Earth. Some life on Earth captures CO2, and the other emits CO2, until it runs into some consequences; then the cycle repeats.
- barney54 7y agoHere's some context of what the consensus science says about drought: https://wg1.ipcc.ch/presentations/Sbsta_drought.pdf https://wg1.ipcc.ch/presentations/Sbsta_drought.pdf • Low confidence in an observed global-scale trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the 1950s, due to lack of direct observations, methodological uncertainties and choice and geographical inconsistencies in the trends; • High confidence that the frequency and intensity of drought since 1950 have likely increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa (although 1970s Sahel drought dominates the trend) and likely decreased in central North America and northwest Australia; • Low confidence in attributing changes in drought over global land areas since the mid-20th century to human influence owing to observational uncertainties and difficulties in distinguishing decadal-scale variability in drought from long-term trends; • High confidence for droughts during the last millennium of greater magnitude and longer duration than those observed since the beginning of the 20th century in many regions.
- huijzer 7y agoFor me no data analysis is necessary to come to a similar conclusion. My parents have a farm in the Netherlands and they are reminded of the lack of rain daily. The most clear example is of the channel ('gracht' in Dutch) around the house. The channel is almost drying up this year. This has never occurred before while my parents or my grandparents occupied the farm. It was also clear on a recent visit to family in Poland. The corn, potatoes and beets looked yellow and awful for all fields except the parts where somehow there was some water (for example, valleys).