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Sustainability• 15:18 • Modified at 15:23
'Drought may last the entire summer in the Netherlands'
Author : BNR Web Editors
The drought is spreading and our nature is starting to crack. In nature reserves, the risk of fire is increasing rapidly and agricultural land is at risk of becoming salinized. Moreover, significant rain still seems far away. 'The prospects are that this situation will continue for a long time and may extend over the entire summer', says meteorologist Reinout van den Born of weerverteller.nl.

The drought has been going on for quite some time now. According to Van den Born, the situation has already manifested itself during the winter. 'You can see that the active weather in Europe has moved all the way to the extreme edges, the north of Scandinavia on one side and the south of Europe on the other. In between, the atmosphere is very calm, and that is where high-pressure areas feel very much at home.'

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These high pressure areas always come from the Iceland and Greenland region, according to the meteorologist, but also from the Azores high, the semi-permanent high pressure area above the Atlantic Ocean. 'They dive in between and it stays dry here.'

Long dry period
The past two years were very wet, which means that there is still a lot of water under the dry top layer of the soil, according to Van den Born. In that sense, there is no reason to panic yet. 'But the prospects are that this situation will continue for a long time and possibly extend over the entire summer. Then you are talking about a long dry period. We have seen in other dry years that in that case a wet history does not help either.'

According to the meteorologist, the dry area in Europe is expanding further and further, it extends over Germany and Poland all the way to the west of Russia and Ukraine, and south to the Alpine region. This has consequences for what the rivers bring into our country. 'The supply of the Rhine comes from the Alps, where only 30 percent of the normal amount of precipitation fell last winter', according to Van den Born. 'You see that rivers are very low, at the bottom of their bandwidth for this time of year. In that sense, it is good that water boards have already decided to retain water, to get through that period as well as possible.'

Hot summer
With the ongoing drought, the risk of wildfires is also increasing significantly; in March, things went wrong a few times. The drought will quickly intensify again in the coming period, according to Van den Born, after it rained mainly in the east of the country in recent weeks. 'Mainly due to the combination of evaporation and a lot of sunshine, and the fact that nature needs a lot of water.'

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According to Van den Born, the seasonal models show without exception that the dry period will continue throughout the summer, with very dry conditions and high temperatures in July and August in particular. Drought also fuels heat. 'Then you might go back to 40 degrees during a heat wave in the Netherlands too. The only uncertainty is the month of June, then it might be a bit more changeable. But we'll have to wait and see.'