Research has found that droughts in Europe since 2014 have been at their worst in 2000 years.
Research led by the University of Cambridge has found that weather across Europe since 2014 has been extraordinary, with the series of severe droughts and heatwaves being the most extreme in 2000 years.
Recent summer droughts and heatwaves in Europe have had devastating ecological and economic consequences, which will worsen as the global climate continues to warm, research suggests.
The international team studied the chemical fingerprints in European oak trees to reconstruct summer climates of over 2,11o years. They found that after a long-term drying trend, droughts conditions since 2015 suddenly intensified, beyond anything in the past 2,000 years.
This anomaly is likely the result of human-caused climate change and associate shifts in the jet stream.
Professor Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge’s Department of Geography said: “We’re all aware of the cluster of exceptionally hot and dry summers we’ve had over the past few years, but we needed precise reconstructions of historical conditions to see how these recent extremes compare to previous years.
“Our results show that what we have experienced over the past five summers is extraordinary for central Europe, in terms of how dry it has been consecutively. Generally, our understanding is worse the further back we go back in time, as datasets looking at past drought conditions are rare.
“However, insights before medieval times are particularly vital, because they enable us to get a more complete picture of past drought variations, which were essential for the functioning and productivity of ecosystems and societies
Most studies attempting to reconstruct past climates are restricted to temperature, but stable isotopes in tree rings can provide annually-resolved and absolutely-dated information about hydroclimatic changes over long periods of time.
Over the 2,110-year period, the tree-ring isotope data showed there were very wet summers, such as 200, 720 and 1100 CE, and very dry summers, such as 40, 590, 950 and 1510 CE. Despite these ‘out of the ordinary years’, the results show that for the past two millennia, Europe has been slowly getting drier.
Professor Büntgen also mentions that: “Climate change does not mean that it will get drier everywhere: some places may get wetter or colder, but extreme conditions will become more frequent, which could be devastating for agriculture, ecosystems and societies as a whole.”
The samples from 2015-2018, however, show that drought conditions in recent summers far exceed anything in the 2,110 years: “We’ve seen a sharp drop following centuries of a slow, significant decline, which is particularly alarming for agriculture and forestry,” said Professor Mirek Trnka from the CzechGlobe Research Centre in Brno, Czech Republic.
The results of the international study have been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Shawna Healey
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Shawna Healey
Originally from South Wales, Shawna Healey is a geography graduate of Manchester Metropolitan University, currently studying MSc journalism at Leeds Beckett University. With over two years journalism experience under her belt, Shawna has written for aAh! Magazine, the Wakefield Express and the Yorkshire Evening Post. During her free time, Shawna loves reading, listening to podcasts, and attending to her pet fish.