Abstract

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Droughts often have a severe impact on the environment, society, and the economy. The variables and scales that are relevant to understand the impact of drought motivated this study, which compared hazard and propagation characteristics, as well as impacts, of major droughts between 1990 and 2019 in southwestern Germany. We bring together high-resolution datasets of air temperature, precipitation, soil moisture simulations, and streamflow and groundwater level observations, as well as text-based information on drought impacts. Various drought characteristics were derived from the hydrometeorological and drought impact time series and compared across variables and spatial scales. Results revealed different drought types sharing similar hazard and impact characteristics. The most severe drought type identified is an intense multi-seasonal drought type peaking in summer, i.e., the events in 2003, 2015, and 2018. This drought type appeared in all domains of the hydrological cycle and coincided with high air temperatures, causing a high number of and variability in drought impacts. The regional average drought signals of this drought type exhibit typical drought propagation characteristics such as a time lag between meteorological and hydrological drought, whereas propagation characteristics of local drought signals are variable in space. This spatial variability in drought hazard increased when droughts propagated through the hydrological cycle, causing distinct differences among variables, as well as regional average and local drought information. Accordingly, single variable or regional average drought information is not sufficient to fully explain the variety of drought impacts that occurred, supporting the conclusion that in regions as diverse as the case study presented here, large-scale drought monitoring needs to be complemented by local drought information to assess the multifaceted impact of drought.

Highlights

  • The Central and Northern European drought and heatwave of 2018 revealed once more the large spatial-temporal footprint and severe impacts of this natural hazard (e.g. Bakke et al, 2020; Brunner et al, 2019; Schuldt et al, 2020)

  • This spatial variability in drought hazard increased when droughts propagated through the hydrological cycle, causing distinct differences among variables, and regional average and local drought information

  • There can be a lot of within year monthly variability according to Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS)-1 average T1

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Summary

Introduction

The Central and Northern European drought and heatwave of 2018 revealed once more the large spatial-temporal footprint and severe impacts of this natural hazard (e.g. Bakke et al, 2020; Brunner et al, 2019; Schuldt et al, 2020). On fresh-water resources (e.g. Samaniego et al, 2018; Wanders and Wada, 2015) This prospect raises the importance of shortand long-term drought management to better cope with both ongoing drought as well as to be better prepared for future drought episodes (Wilhite et al, 2019). 35 On the one hand, locally relevant drought management benefits from detailed information, which considers different hydrometeorological variables and drought related impacts and their spatiotemporal variability (e.g., Van Lanen et al, 2016). 50 Laaha et al (2017) argue that our understanding of drought would benefit from a more holistic study of drought phenomena, because specific drought impacts relate to droughts in certain domains of the hydrological cycle. The co-occurrence of drought in different domains of the hydrological cycle may worsen drought impacts. Regional scale drought propagation is a less well-established concept

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