Dry winters heat European summers.When southern Europe Southern Europe or sometimes Mediterranean Europe is a region of the European continent. There is no clear definition of the term which can vary depending on whether geographic, cultural, linguistic or historical factors are taken into account. receives scant scant adj. scant·er, scant·est 1. Barely sufficient: paid scant attention to the lecture. 2. Falling short of a specific measure: a scant cup of sugar. rainfall in the winter, the whole continent tends to bake the following summer. Each of Europe's 10 warmest summers between 1948 and 2005 followed a winter in which the continent's Mediterranean countries experienced significant deficits in rainfall, says Robert Vautard, a climate scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Gif sur Yvette. For those years, moreover, the scarcer the wintertime rainfall, the hotter the following summer, he notes. Vautard and his colleagues turned to climate simulations to investigate the theoretical effect of wintertime droughts at latitudes below 46[degrees]N, an east-west line that runs just north of Venice and splits France in half. When portions of Europe south of that latitude latitude, angular distance of any point on the surface of the earth north or south of the equator. The equator is latitude 0°, and the North Pole and South Pole are latitudes 90°N and 90°S, respectively. began the summer with a soil-moisture content of only 15 percent, average July temperatures there would be as much as 6[degrees]C higher than if the soil had a more typical 30 percent moisture. Also, some regions north of 46[degrees]N, such as Switzerland and southern Germany The term Southern Germany (German: Süddeutschland) is used to describe a region in the south of Germany. The exact area defined by the term is not constant, but it usually includes Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, and the southern part of Hesse. , would experience average July temperatures up to 2[degrees]C higher after a dry winter than after a wet one, even if the previous winter's drought had been confined con·fine v. con·fined, con·fin·ing, con·fines v.tr. 1. To keep within bounds; restrict: Please confine your remarks to the issues at hand. See Synonyms at limit. to southern Europe, the researchers note in the April 16 Geophysical Research Letters Geophysical Research Letters is a publication of the American Geophysical Union. GRL is the organization's only letters journal. Since its introduction in 1974, GRL has published only short research letters, typically 3-5 pages long, which focus on a specific discipline or . Because many climate projections suggest that southern Europe will become drier in the coming decades, the new findings suggest that European heat waves will become more frequent.--S.P. |
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