Flooding

You always think that climate change happens at far away playces. Melting glaciers in the arctic, wildfires in Australia, droughts in Africa. Until the point when you realize that you live damn close to the river that doubled its size because of the ongoing rainfalls. Then you suddenly find yourself wondering if the dyke will be able to keep the water or even if, if it might simply be overflown. Where would I get sandbags from? Will sandbags help anything at all? What things may I be able to save on short notice? Which furniture might be taken upstairs to protect it from potential flooding damages? 

There it is: climate change at our doorsteps. Predictions often expect the climate in Germany to become warmer and dryer but - as crazy as it sounds - there might be an increasing amount of rain, too. The root cause for the heavy rainfalls probably lies in the warm surface temperature of the Western Atlantic. Increasing evaporation leads to a high amount of steem in the atmosphere. West winds transport these humid air masses to Europe and the result of it is what you can see on the pictures. 

This does not only effect our (human) lifes. A lot of animals depend on the alluvial meadows as their habitat. Once it got flooded, they are forced to escape. Not only do they need to leave their safe refuge from our manmade world, cross streets, meet dogs and face other dangers. This also costs them a lot of energy while their survival in the winter highly depends on saving energy.

It is our responsibility to reduce any further climate impacts as much as possible - for us and for our deer friends. 'Cause who knows if the water will stop at the top of the dyke next time?

A deer walking through a birch forest. Exact the same forest got heavily flooded in the beginnig of the year.