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Conquering Droughts Part 3: Artificial Glaciers 🧊🏔
Conquering Droughts Part 3: Artificial Glaciers 🧊🏔 All over the world, humans depend on meltwater in summer to sustain agriculture or ensure river transportation. For instance, the Rhine in central Europe consisted of 20% glacier meltwater during the extreme drought in 2003 [1]. Climate change diminishes meltwater quantities in summer. With warmer winters, less precipitation…
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🌾Protecting Harvests Part 4 – Breeding Drought Resistant Crops 🌽🌾
Droughts threaten our food production! In the last decade, crop failure due to drought lead to losses of 32 Billion USD in low income countries alone (FAO, https://www.fao.org/resources/digital-reports/disasters-in-agriculture/en/). Climate change will exercabate this crisis, since droughts will become more frequent. We need to adapt farming to ensure harvests and protect global food supply. Besides using…
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Conquering Droughts Part 2: (Urban) Rainwater Harvesting
How humans influence droughts Droughts come in different “natural” stages and severities (see last newsletter: 🌧 meterological drought, 🌾 agricultural drought, 🚱 hydrological drought), but humans can exacerbate them. This effect is called “anthropogenic drought”, being defined by AghaKouchak and others (2021) as the enhancement of agricultural and especially hydrological drought through human behaviour. As…
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Conquering Droughts Part 1: Artificial Aquifer Recharge
Preface: Climate change adaptation is only effecive when also commiting to climate change mitigation Definitions: aquifer = groundwater body Droughts and Climate Change Droughts are among the most devastating consequences of climate change, affecting millions of people around the world. Droughts occur when there is unusually low rainfall or water scarcity over an extended period…
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Meterological Drought in Southwest Germany
Recently we have heard a lot about the current drought in Spain and Italy. Rainfalls are missing and rivers are dry. But how are we doing in Baden-Wurttemberg? While its definitely not as severe as in other parts of Europe, some areas are also missing lots of winter precipitation. The plot shows how much water…