Never seen before: Europe’s drought in the past 20 years has been worse than in the past 2,000 years

　　"Unseen" climate events are taking place　　The

　　drought

in

Europe in the past 20 years is more serious than in the past two thousand years

　　Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, March 21 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) The British "Nature·Earth Science" magazine recently published a climatological survey online. Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom reconstructed the drought events in Europe in the past 2000 years. The results show that Europe The drought period in the past 20 years is more serious than the drought period caused by man-made climate change in the past 2110 years.

　　A prolonged drought will have a huge impact on the environment and society.

For example, 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.

　　In view of this, Cambridge University researcher Yulf Berndgen and his colleagues analyzed the 27,080 annual rings of 147 oak trees grown in Central Europe in the past 2110 years to reconstruct Europe in the past 2000 years. Drought events.

They analyzed the oxygen and carbon isotopic composition of these annual rings (the response of trees to water and heat stress causes these isotopic compositions to change systematically).

By combining the records of existing trees and logs taken from old buildings and archaeological sites, the research team was able to determine whether droughts occurred in any year beginning in 75 BC.

　　The analysis of the research team shows that in the past 20 years, the high year-on-year growth rate of drought events in Europe is unprecedented, almost the same as that of the Late Ancient Little Ice Age (around the 6th century AD) and the Renaissance (early 16th century AD). )quite.

　　Researchers believe that the location of atmospheric circulation and jets above the European continent is the main cause of drought events in the region's history.

The continuous changes in these circulation patterns with current climate change may be the reason for the recent increase in dry and hot summers in Europe.

　　An earlier study from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration believed that the "drought map" derived from tree ring data can prove that there may be a correlation between human activities and drought risk since the beginning of the 20th century.