
Almost half of Europe’s soil is dryer than normal - tobr
https://vis4.net/drought-in-europe/
======
joaodlf
I have just received an environmental report for a property I am hoping to
buy, which flagged up increased risk of subsidence. This is due to clay in the
soil - which expands/contracts depending on temperature and water content.

This is very common in south of the UK, and usually doesn't have too much risk
involved (especially if the foundations were built under soil considerations)
but I wonder what impact this might have in the close future, with
temperatures soaring and so many old buildings/homes over 100 years old.

Climate change will impact on things that don’t even cross our minds.

~~~
mariushn
May I please get that report as a sample? I'm looking into how to make easier
to produce such reports. My email is in profile. Thanks!

~~~
joaodlf
Hi, I can't really share the report itself (way too much of my own data in
it), but the section on subsidence risk comes directly from this:
[http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain3d/index.html](http://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyofbritain3d/index.html)

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colechristensen
The headline is a meaningless tautology.

In a "perfectly normal" year half of soil would be drier than normal, half
would be wetter than normal, and none would be exactly normal.

The most reasonable way to interpret the headline would be to say soil is
slightly wetter than normal, which is obviously not the intended message.

~~~
zemvpferreira
Normal meaning the historical normal of course, not the strict mathematical
term. Let’s not be purposely obtuse.

~~~
taneq
Well the strict mathematical term doesn't even make sense because a scalar
can't be perpendicular. Unless you're claiming the moisture is imaginary, I
guess...

~~~
hwillis
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution)

Though given how much glsl I write, I appreciate that

~~~
taneq
I'm well aware of the normal distribution but it's just not as funny. :P

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hannob
I have some issues with takes like this headline.

It's not "dryer than normal". It's "dry like the new normal". Also "lower end
of dryness of tomorrows normal".

Climate change is happening. It's a bad take to make it sound like something's
going back to a "normal" that will probably never happen again. What is
"normal" is changing and we need to think how to deal with this, not consider
it an anomaly.

~~~
tasuki
I think the headline is just trying to be objective and let the readers come
to their own conclusions.

Climate change has always been happening. What is "normal" has always been
changing. The Azolla event led to the decrease of atmospheric CO2 from 3500ppm
to 650ppm over the period of 800k years. Humanity has (so far) increased
atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 400ppm. Yes, we're faster than Azolla. But
we'll probably stop or be stopped before we reach 3500ppm.

One of my favourite recent HN comments
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20496507)):

> So, this is all a part of natural cycle. Humans are part of life on Earth.
> Some life on Earth captures CO2, and the other emits CO2, until it runs into
> some consequences; then the cycle repeats.

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StavrosK
I see that Greece's soil is wetter than normal, that must be because we've
been getting atypical rains, almost tropical (including an unprecedented
hurricane!).

At least we haven't been getting heat waves, I guess.

~~~
Bombthecat
Well, I dont know why, call it a gut feeling or whatever. But I suspect that
germany and maybe even whole Europe gets weather like Texas (dry rainy, hot)

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barney54
If you would like additional context, here’s the U.S. drought monitor which
shows very little drought currently in the United States.
[https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/)

~~~
hwillis
Draught is an extremely noisy measurement. Because California got some
unexpected but not unprecedented rain, draught on average is way down. However
many parts of the US are also extremely abnormally dry- even if they aren't
pushed into full on draught: [https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/09/01/driest-
boston-summer](https://www.wbur.org/news/2016/09/01/driest-boston-summer)

It doesn't even matter if the dryness has no negative effect whatsoever (which
it certainly does), because it's a measurement of a trend and it WILL
eventually cause issues.

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huijzer
For me no data analysis is necessary to come to a similar conclusion. My
parents have a farm in the Netherlands and they are reminded of the lack of
rain daily. The most clear example is of the channel ('gracht' in Dutch)
around the house. The channel is almost drying up this year. This has never
occurred before while my parents or my grandparents occupied the farm.

It was also clear on a recent visit to family in Poland. The corn, potatoes
and beets looked yellow and awful for all fields except the parts where
somehow there was some water (for example, valleys).

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barney54
Here's some context of what the consensus science says about drought:
[https://wg1.ipcc.ch/presentations/Sbsta_drought.pdf](https://wg1.ipcc.ch/presentations/Sbsta_drought.pdf)

• Low confidence in an observed global-scale trend in drought or dryness (lack
of rainfall) since the 1950s, due to lack of direct observations,
methodological uncertainties and choice and geographical inconsistencies in
the trends;

• High confidence that the frequency and intensity of drought since 1950 have
likely increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa (although 1970s Sahel
drought dominates the trend) and likely decreased in central North America and
northwest Australia;

• Low confidence in attributing changes in drought over global land areas
since the mid-20th century to human influence owing to observational
uncertainties and difficulties in distinguishing decadal-scale variability in
drought from long-term trends;

• High confidence for droughts during the last millennium of greater magnitude
and longer duration than those observed since the beginning of the 20th
century in many regions.

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anovikov
Surprised to see that there are places in Cyprus where the soil is wetter than
normal. I thought i live in a semi-desert. In addition, the climate is wetter
in the southwest areas here (near Paphos) and dryer northeast, map shows it
other way around. For example, bananas are commericaly grown around Paphos but
won't be a viable cash crop east of Limassol.

~~~
hwillis
That's because its relative to location. The map tracks anomalies, not
differences from a pan-european historical average single value.

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arpa
Most of these dry areas on the map are pretty mountainous/significantly higher
elevation. Have no idea how that makes things different, but it still strikes
me as a significant point to consider when interpreting the data.

~~~
pilsetnieks
It does not coincide with elevation (see an elevation map of Europe:
[https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/elevation-
ma...](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/elevation-map-of-
europe)). Finland, the Baltics, Netherlands, Denmark, England, South of
Sweden, North of France and Germany are pretty low. Italy, Greece and Turkey
are all higher elevated and they are wetter than normal.

~~~
pimmen
And Norway is almost completely mountains, yet most of their soil doesn't seem
too badly affected.

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toyg
Personally, I've reached a point where I think changes are irreversible -
there is no point trying to persuade the world to down tools, because the
developing world is not going to listen (understandably so) and it's probably
too late anyway (changes originally predicted by models to happen around 2070
are already here). From now on, we just have to put our collective minds to
preparedness and countering: we will have to manage the excess water and heat
as best as we can, and accept populations will be displaced.

Unlike with medieval plagues, we understand this problem and most of its
effects. We can deal with it, as long as we don't deny it nor use it to push
unrealistic beliefs.

~~~
_Microft
Sorry to be so blunt but fatalism is a pretty convenient thing. It dispenses
one from having to put up a fight and saves one from any efforts that this
might entail. I don't like this attitude as it only gets in the way of others
who do not give up easily.

