By P Gosselin
Disconnected from actuality: Regardless of heavy winter rains, flooding and DWD information, Germany’s Helmholtz Institute insists elements of Germany are “extraordinarily dry”.
By Frank Bosse
We already reported a number of occasions (right here and right here) on the Helmholtz Institute’s Drought Monitor.
Within the meantime, there have been main floods, particularly in north-western Germany, and in addition quite a lot of precipitation elsewhere. In Saxony, the DWD German nationwide climate service recorded some 107 mm of precipitation in December, 2023, which is 78% greater than the long-term imply. There was additionally a rise of 10% over the entire 2023 12 months.
Now let’s check out the drought monitor within the area and, as of January 5, 2024, it nonetheless exhibits areas in northeastern Saxony with excessive (darkish crimson) and distinctive drought (crimson) within the complete soil to a depth of 1.80 m.
We have now in contrast this intimately with the soil profiles out there from the DWD, as much as January 5, 2024. Right here is the outcome:
On the backside left is the Helmholtz Drought Monitor picture for Saxony, together with the DWD profiles for the respective areas: high left, high proper, and backside proper. Clearly the DWD outcomes are opposite to the Helmholtz Frought Monitir depiction, which by the best way relies on fashions.
On the high left close to Elsterheide, the Helmholtz Drought Monitor exhibits “excessive drought” of the whole soil as of January 5, 2024 and the corresponding DWD profile reveals 90-100% moisture penetration all through. At Boxberg (high proper), right down to 1.3m is over 90% moisture, between 40 and 100 cm depth there may be oversaturation, beneath 130 cm right down to a depth of 2m there may be nonetheless 50-60%.
Is that this what “excessive drought” appears like, in accordance with Helmholtz?
The Neisse floodplain (backside proper) tops all of it off: Helmholtz additionally signifies “excessive drought” right here. However the DWD exhibits there’s 100% moisture within the soil profile right down to a depth of 1.8 m. Between 80 cm and 140 cm, the soil is in actual fact saturated with water.
If drought is known as an absence of water, then the “Drought Monitor” should be representing one thing else! It has nothing to do with actuality and everybody must be warned to not take the depictions at face worth.
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