Chinanews.com, Beijing, March 16 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Springer Nature's professional academic journal "Nature-Earth Science" recently published a research paper on climate change online, pointing out that Europe has had more dry periods in the past 20 years than in the past. In 2110, other dry periods caused by man-made climate change have become more severe.
The paper stated that prolonged drought will have a huge impact on the environment and society.
The summer heat waves that Europe experienced in 2003, 2015 and 2018 put a lot of pressure on the food and health systems in Europe.
However, due to the lack of reliable drought records before the preservation of high-quality meteorological observation data, it has been difficult for researchers to understand the causes and frequency of these drought events, and their differences from previous drought events.
The corresponding author of the paper, Ulf Büntgen, University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues analyzed the 27,080 annual rings of 147 oak trees that grew in the past 2110 years in Central Europe and reconstructed Europe’s drought in the past two thousand years. event.
They analyzed the oxygen and carbon isotopic composition of these annual rings-the response of trees to water and heat stress will cause these isotopic compositions to change systematically.
By combining the records of existing trees and logs taken from old buildings and archaeological sites, researchers can determine whether there has been a drought in any year beginning in 75 BC.
Their analysis shows that in the past 20 years, the high year-on-year growth rate of drought events in Europe is unprecedented, almost comparable to the Late Ancient Little Ice Age (around the 6th century AD) and the Renaissance (early 16th century AD). .
The author of the paper believes that the location of atmospheric circulation and jets above the European continent is the main cause of drought events in the history of the region.
Although these circulation patterns continue to change with the current climate change, although they are complicated, they may be the reason for the recent increase in dry and hot summers in Europe.
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