June 2021: The summer heatwave and drought that scorched northern Europe including Scandinavia and the British Isles saw unprecedented soil drying and feedbacks from land to atmosphere that likely intensified the extreme conditions. Such feedbacks are common around the Mediterranean Sea, but not north of the Alps. Dr. Paul Dirmeyer with colleagues at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts found strong evidence in observations and meteorological analyses of unprecedented amplification of hot temperatures by dry land in a paper in AGU Advances. The paper also has an Editor's highlight, and news articles by both the American Geophysical Union (as a companion viewpoint article) and the GMU College of Science.
Dirmeyer, P. A., G. Balsamo, E. M. Blyth, R. Morrison, and H. M. Cooper, 2021: Land-atmosphere interactions may have exacerbated the drought and heatwave over northern Europe during summer 2018. AGU Advances, 2, e2020AV000283, doi: 10.1029/2020AV000283.