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Since 2015, summer heat waves in Europe have been drastically drier and hotter than in the past 2,000 years. This is the finding of a research project at the University of Cambridge. The presumed cause is "human-induced climate change", according to the study, which has now been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
In it, the scientists reconstructed summer weather over 2,110 years by analysing the rings of live and dead oak trees in what is now the Czech Republic and southern Germany. "Climate change does not mean that it will be drier everywhere in the future," the study's lead author, Professor Ulf Büntgen from the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, emphasised in the paper. "Some regions may even become wetter or colder, but extreme conditions will become more frequent. This could have devastating consequences for agriculture, viticulture, ecosystems and society as a whole," Büntgen writes.
(uka / Photo: German Wine Institute)