Abstract
Droughts can have important impacts on environment and economy like in the year 2018 in parts of Europe. Droughts can be analyzed in terms of meteorological drought, agricultural drought, hydrological drought and social-economic drought. In this paper, we focus on meteorological and agricultural drought and analyzed drought trends for the period 1965–2019 and assessed how extreme the drought year 2018 was in Germany and the Netherlands. The analysis was made on the basis of the following drought indices: standardized precipitation index (SPI), standardized soil moisture index (SSI), potential precipitation deficit (PPD) and ET deficit. SPI and SSI were computed at two time scales, the period April-September and a 12-months period. In order to analyze drought trends and the ranking of the year 2018, HYDRUS 1-D simulations were carried out for 31 sites with long-term meteorological observations and soil moisture, potential evapotranspiration (ET) and actual ET were determined for five soil types (clay, silt, loam, sandy loam and loamy sand). The results show that the year 2018 was severely dry, which was especially related to the highest potential ET in the time series 1965–2019, for most of the sites. For around half of the 31 sites the year 2018 had the lowest SSI, and largest PPD and ET-deficit in the 1965–2019 time series, followed by 1976 and 2003. The trend analysis reveals that meteorological drought (SPI) hardly shows significant trends over 1965–2019 over the studied domain, but agricultural droughts (SSI) are increasing, at several sites significantly, and at even more sites PPD and ET deficit show significant trends. The increasing droughts over Germany and Netherlands are mainly driven by increasing potential ET and increasing vegetation water demand.
Highlights
Drought is a climatic phenomenon that is expected to increase in frequency and severity over Europe in the future and is related to the ongoing climate change (Seneviratne et al, 2012a; Orlowsky and Seneviratne, 2013; Mukherjee et al, 2018; Samaniego et al, 2018; Pokhrel et al, 2021)
We focus on meteorological drought and agricultural drought
Different to the German regions, the Netherlands experienced a small increase in precipitation at the rate of 0.385 mm/year
Summary
Drought is a climatic phenomenon that is expected to increase in frequency and severity over Europe in the future and is related to the ongoing climate change (Seneviratne et al, 2012a; Orlowsky and Seneviratne, 2013; Mukherjee et al, 2018; Samaniego et al, 2018; Pokhrel et al, 2021). Droughts are considered to be the most damaging natural hazard after floods, when measured globally in terms of the population affected, suffering more than 2.2 million victims from 1950 to 2014 (Mishra and Singh, 2010; Guha-Sapir, 2015; Zink et al, 2016). Droughts have a negative impact on food production, and shortage of water supply, making it the costliest disaster in Europe in general (AghaKouchak, 2014; Guha-Sapir et al., 2015; Zink et al, 2016). Hydrological, agricultural and socio-economic drought, in correspondence with Mishra and Singh (2010), Wilhite and Glantz (1985) and AMS (2004). Meteorological drought is related to a period with rain deficiency with respect to the long-term average precipitation, and is usually assessed by a standardized precipitation index (SPI) (AMS, 2004). Hydrological drought is characterized by a river discharge deficit or low groundwater level (Wilhite and Glantz, 1985). Agricultural drought is defined in terms of soil moisture deficit, leading to crop yield reductions (Anderson et al, 2016)
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