The biggest drought events in Europe from 1950 to 2012

Abstract

Study region: Europe, including European Russia, but excluding Greenland, the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Madeira. Study focus: Drought is a complex climate-related phenomenon that can affect different sectors causing economic, social, and environmental impacts. We focus on meteorological and hydrological droughts, defined as shortage of precipitation over several months and we discuss the biggest drought events in 1950–2012. To define such drought events we computed three drought indicators, the Standardized Precipitation Index, the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, and the Reconnaissance Drought Index and we merged them into a combined indicator at 3-month scale for meteorological and 12-month for hydrological droughts. The indicators have been calculated using the E-OBS gridded data (0.25° × 0.25°). New hydrological insights for the region: Europe has been subdivided into thirteen regions and for each region we determined a list of drought events. The events have been characterized by the time, duration, severity, average area involved, peak month, and area involved at the peak month. We computed time series of the combined indicators for each region and country to determine the twenty-two biggest drought events in 1950–2012. Northern Europe and Russia show the highest drought frequency, duration, and severity in the 1950s and 1960s, where this is for the 1970s in Central Europe and the British Islands, and the 1990s and 2000s for the Mediterranean area and Baltic Republics. Keywords: Climate, Drought, Europe, SPI, SPEI, RDI