After its driest summer in 500 years, much of Europe is in the grip of a winter drought driven by climate breakdown that is prompting growing concern among governments over the water security for homes, farmers and factories across the continent.
A study published in January by Graz University of Technology in Austria, whose scientists used satellite data to analyse groundwater reserves, concluded that Europe has been in drought since 1918 and its water situation was now “very precarious”.
Since 1918 vastly predates any climate change or breakdown the claim in the first paragraph is disproven in the second, isn’t it?
Could it be that the ice age is finally fading away?
Anyway, the obvious solution is just to build more dams to store more water. It’ll be amusing to hear the screams when they’re overfilled, and they have to release water that adds to the flood downstream.
Wishfull thinking Bogan, some suggest the next twenty to thirty years is going to get colder.
But look at this level of ‘expertise’ from US climate ‘czar’ John Kerry: https://twitter.com/i/status/1631072070955040771
I know that an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy but Thomas Massie, the bloke asking the questions, graduated from MIT with a Masters of Science degree.
“climate breakdown”: there it is again. Is two sightings evidence of a trend?
“used satellite data to analyse groundwater reserves”: that sounds interesting. How’s it done?
And another thing. There are Bronze Age field walls on Dartmoor. Scholars think that there was ploughland up there in that era. Conjecture: in a wam, dry spell farmers might move uphill to where the rain is heavier.
Happily Austria has lots and lots of “up there”.
“used satellite data to analyse groundwater reserves”: that sounds interesting. How’s it done?
With a research grant, dearieme
University of Innsbruck were given a nice research grant of 1/2 Million Reichsmarks to find out why valleys in the Alps flooded so easily.
They discovered that the soil on sides of mountains is quite thin and doesn’t soak up water.
Next they are going to devise a new theory about brontosaurouses
. . . theory about brontosaurouses
I believe such theories may be regarded as transphobic in this enlightened era.
*eiagheagh*
I blame the windmills.
Let them drink Perrier
“the satellites show all mass changes and make no distinction between sea, lakes or groundwater. … Torsten Mayer-Gürr and his team provide the total mass, from which the mass changes in the rivers and lakes are then subtracted, the soil moisture, snow and ice are also subtracted and finally only the groundwater remains.”
Subtracting numbers is an excellent way to amplify measurement error. As we learned in school science.
Still, it is indeed interesting stuff, not least because the map suggests that they know about groundwater in the Dogger Bank and other places off the English east coast. Coo!
https://www.tugraz.at/en/tu-graz/services/news-stories/media-service/singleview/article/satellitendaten-belegen-anhaltend-schwere-duerre-in-europa
They look at stuff from then and now and decide that lower = drought.
All they can reasonably determine is that masses are lower, not that they represent a catastrophic reduction in groundwater. To do that, they’d need historical records much further into the past.
Well, they can assume masses are lower, as long as the only source of any perturbation of their pet satellites’ orbits are gravity results and nothing else. As to measuring to ‘micrometer precision’ – seems ambitious.
And that large area of reduced mass betwixt England and Europe seems a tad too far north for the Dogger Bank, tho’ it is in Doggerland…
Yeah.. it’s fun.. now let’s put their model to the test..
Seems Clogland ground water tables have receded around 5cm on average. Especially in the bits that are polder, below sea level, and where the ground water table is actively maintained, because of the Pretty Obvious.
The peaty places.. oh wait.. all polders, to prevent subsidence..
The sandy places that do dry up pretty quick-like… have a yearly variance of about a meter on average.
The rivers that they substracted but are a driving force on ground water tables here do an average up-and-down of about 4 meters over the seasons. Sustained, not incidental…
So those 5 centimeters? A mere rounding error that is not shown in actual records of the ground water tables here.
One may draw their own conclusions.