Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac6888
Licence creative commons licence
Title (Primary) Increasing footprint of climate warming on flash droughts occurrence in Europe
Author Shah, J.; Hari, V.; Rakovec, O. ORCID logo ; Markonis, Y.; Samaniego, L. ORCID logo ; Mishra, V.; Hanel, M.; Hinz, C.; Kumar, R. ORCID logo
Source Titel Environmental Research Letters
Year 2022
Department CHS
Volume 17
Issue 6
Page From art. 064017
Language englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
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Keywords Europe; flash droughts; climate warming; ERA5; soil moisture
Abstract Flash droughts are caused by a rapid depletion of soil moisture, which severely affect vegetation growth and agricultural production. Notwithstanding the growing importance of flash droughts under the warming climate, drivers of flash droughts across the Europe are not well understood. Here we estimate the changes in flash droughts characteristics across Europe using the latest release of ERA5 reanalysis for 1950--2019 period. We find a substantial increase in the frequency and spatial extent of flash droughts across Europe (with 79\% of the total area) during the growing season with at-least one fourth of domain showing two-fold increase in the recent decades. Increased occurrence of flash drought is largely attributed to frequent occurrence of warmer and drier co-occurring events, with a sharp gradient of changes being noticed in Mediterranean and Central European regions. Compound meteorological extremes causing the flash drought events across Europe are pre-dominantly driven by the recent climate warming. With unabated greenhouse gas emissions and current pace of climate warming, Europe is likely to face an increased occurrence of flash droughts, requiring prompt response for effective drought adaptation and management strategies.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=26043
Shah, J., Hari, V., Rakovec, O., Markonis, Y., Samaniego, L., Mishra, V., Hanel, M., Hinz, C., Kumar, R. (2022):
Increasing footprint of climate warming on flash droughts occurrence in Europe
Environ. Res. Lett. 17 (6), art. 064017 10.1088/1748-9326/ac6888