The 2018-2019 European drought sets

a new benchmark over 250 years

Oldrich Rakovec, V. Hari, Y. Markonis, L. Samaniego, M. Hanel, S. Thober, P. Maca, and
R. Kumar

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH – UFZ, Germany

Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech Republic

07.05.2020, EGU2020-6881, HS2.4.1

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 Introduction
• The 21st-century droughts in Europe are regarded as exceptionally severe and negatively affecting
a wide range of socio-economic sectors.

• Main drivers: increase in temperature (CEU & MED) together with a lack of precipitation (especially
in MED) during the spring/summer months:

Source: Hanel et al. (2018), SREP

• We synthesize a space-time evolution of soil moisture droughts in the period of 1766-2019.

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 Methods
• Simulate soil moisture (SM) with the mesoscale Hydrologic
Model (mHM) forced using several bias-corrected
meteorological merged products (Hanel et al. (2018),
SREP) – covering entire Europe until end of 2019.

• Estimate quantile-based soil moisture index (SMI) based

on a 254-year long monthly dataset, which is estimated with
a kernel density approach (Samaniego et al., 2018, NCC)

• Perform a spatio-temporal clustering algorithm to track

droughts through space and time along their evolution, for a
given threshold of SMI<0.2 (Samaniego et al., 2018, NCC)

Source: ufz.de/mhm and git.ufz.de/mhm

• Estimate drought statistics such as areal extent, duration,
intensity for all identified soil moisture drought events.
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 Results: aggregated
14
• In terms of total drought magnitude (bubble size), the 1857−1860

ongoing recent 2018-2019 drought is ranked as the

Mean duration [month]

12
most extreme, together with 1920-1922, 1857-1860 1861−1864 1920−1922
1988−1991
events. 10
2018−2019
1958−1961
1864−1867
• The 2018-2019 event exhibits the largest average
●

1882−1884
8 1901−1902
drought area covering over 40% of the study domain
6 1947−1948
• The average duration ranks as the fifth, but it’s still 2003−2004
2015−2016
1788−1789
ongoing and propagates further into 2020. 4
© Authors. All rights reserved.

10 20 30 40
Mean area [% of all domain]
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 Results: temporal aspect

40 2018−2019 • Figure shows the temporal evolution

of average drought area for the
1788−1789 1920−1922
Drought area [%]

1947−1948 largest soil moisture drought clusters

30 1901−1902
2015−2016
1857−1860
across entire Europe.
1988−1991
2003−2004 1861−1864
20 1958−1961
1864−1867
• All these exceptional droughts were
1882−1884
initiated in spring primarily as a result
10
of compounding effects of low
precipitation and high temperatures
© Authors. All rights reserved.
0 leading to extreme soil water deficits.
0 10 20 30 40
Duration from onset (month)
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 Results: spatial aspect
70 70 70 70
60
60 60 60
50
50 50 50

Area [%]
Area [%]

Area [%]

Area [%]
40
40 40 40
30
30 30 30
20
20 20 20
10
10 10 10
0
0 0 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Duration from onset [month]
Duration from onset [month] Duration from onset [month] Duration from onset [month]

© Authors. All rights reserved.

• Maps show the spatial extent of the three most severe soil moisture droughts (1857-1960, 1920-1922,
2018-2019) + the 2003-2004 drought, in terms of total drought duration.

• Our analysis reveals that the 2018-2019 event is a new European drought benchmark replacing
the well-documented 2003 European drought and all droughts prior 2000!
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Thank You!

Contact: Oldrich.Rakovec@ufz.de

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