Drought in the Hungarian Plains – new publication

The summer of 2022 brought a catastrophic drought to the Great Hungarian Plain. Almost no rain fell for weeks, and in the eastern part of the country, the economic loss of autumn crops was almost total. Gábor Timár and Balázs Székely of the Department of Geophysics and Space Science and Gusztáv Jakab of the Department of Environment and Landscape Geography show in their review article that the unusually severe drought, one of the conditions for the formation of thunderstorms: a layer of humid air near the surface was missing. As a result, the thunderstorms that provided the bulk of the summer rainfall were absent, exacerbating the situation and precluding the possibility of further storms over a period of several weeks. Their proposal is therefore to restore wetlands, meadows and pastures in a part of the lowland landscape - estimated to be at least one county in total - and even to divert excess water from elsewhere during the winter and snowmelt floods. This can guarantee that rainfall can return in drought years, which will also bring rainwater to agricultural areas. These 'evapotranspiration areas' could be created in the lowest areas of the lowlands, on the lowest-value agricultural land with a lower 'golden crown' value, where the soil is not optimal for arable farming anyway.

The review article was published in the journal Land in open access form.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/13/2/146