Dinner Speech - Kerstin Stahl

Drought in Germany - impact of climate change or changing socio-economic impacts?

Germany, as many other parts of the world, has recently been exposed to various climatic extremes. The summer of 2018, for example, has broken a number of records in terms of dry weather and heat. The resulting drought of 2018, in fact, lasted for a particularly long period of time and had severe impacts on agriculture, forestry, river ecology, drinking water supplies, riverborne transportation, tourism and other water-dependent sectors. In light of the extreme consequences of this event, a question often asked is: how severe was this event? To elucidate this question, we explore to what degree the drought was unusual compared to historic hydro-meteorological observations. But we also have to ask whether the consequences from drought and therefore our perception of such events have changed. This dinner speech aims to provide some insight into these competing explanations based on ongoing interdisciplinary drought research.