Germany’s Soaking Wet Drought…Helmholtz Drought Monitor Insists Drought Persists

By Frank Bosse

We already reported several times (here and here) on the Helmholtz Institute’s Drought Monitor.

In the meantime, there have been major floods, especially in north-western Germany, and also a lot of precipitation elsewhere. In Saxony, the DWD German national weather service recorded some 107 mm of precipitation in December, 2023, which is 78% more than the long-term mean. There was also an increase of 10% over the whole 2023 year.

Now let’s take a look at the drought monitor in the region and, as of January 5, 2024, it still shows areas in northeastern Saxony with extreme (dark red) and exceptional drought (red) in the total soil to a depth of 1.80 m.

We have compared this in detail with the soil profiles available from the DWD, up to January 5, 2024. Here is the result:

At the bottom left is the Helmholtz Drought Monitor image for Saxony, along with the DWD profiles for the respective locations: top left, top right, and bottom right. Clearly the DWD results are contrary to the Helmholtz Frought Monitir depiction, which by the way is based on models.

At the top left near Elsterheide, the Helmholtz Drought Monitor shows “extreme drought” of the entire soil as of January 5, 2024 and the corresponding DWD profile reveals 90-100% moisture penetration throughout. At Boxberg (top right), down to 1.3m is over 90% moisture, between 40 and 100 cm depth there is oversaturation, below 130 cm down to a depth of 2m there is still 50-60%.

Is this what “extreme drought” looks like, according to Helmholtz?

The Neisse floodplain (bottom right) tops it all off: Helmholtz also indicates “extreme drought” here. But the DWD shows there’s 100% moisture in the soil profile down to a depth of 1.8 m. Between 80 cm and 140 cm, the soil is in fact saturated with water.

If drought is understood as a lack of water, then the “Drought Monitor” must be representing something else! It has nothing to do with reality and everyone should be warned not to take the depictions at face value.

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