Past megadroughts in central Europe were longer, more severe and less warm than modern droughts

Abstract

Megadroughts are notable manifestations of the American Southwest, but not so much of the European climate. By using long-term hydrological and meteorological observations, as well as paleoclimate reconstructions, here we show that central Europe has experienced much longer and severe droughts during the Spörer Minimum (~AD 1400–1480) and Dalton Minimum (~AD 1770–1840), than the ones observed during the 21st century. These two megadroughts appear to be linked with a cold state of the North Atlantic Ocean and enhanced winter atmospheric blocking activity over the British Isles and western part of Europe, concurrent with reduced solar forcing and explosive volcanism. Moreover, we show that the recent drought events (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018), are within the range of natural variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium.

Comment on gmd-2021-225

“…Another possible field of application is palaeoclimatology. Spatial distribution of precipitation extremes is known to have changed markedly in the past Ionita et al, 2021b), and clustering based on climate models could be used to generalise the sparse existing data to larger regions.…”

A Comparison of the Characteristics of Extreme Drought During the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries Over Eurasia and North America

“…A series of dry years has been observed within Eastern Europe and Western Russia (EE/WR) over the last 15 years (e.g., [11]). Ionita et al [11] demonstrated past 'megadrought epochs' over central Europe were decadal.…”

“…A series of dry years has been observed within Eastern Europe and Western Russia (EE/WR) over the last 15 years (e.g., [11]). Ionita et al [11] demonstrated past 'megadrought epochs' over central Europe were decadal. However, [12] found the trend in drought over central and eastern Europe has been steady since the mid-20th century.…”

Forestry contributed to warming of forest ecosystems in northern Germany during the extreme summers of 2018 and 2019

“…The extreme drought in 2018 severely affected forest stands in Germany (Ionita et al., 2021), and, as a consequence, about twice as many trees died in 2019 compared to 2018 and about 80% of all living trees showed poor vitality (BMEL, 2020). Climate conditions, which are currently perceived as extreme (Büntgen et al., 2021), could represent the new ‘normal’ in the near future (Hari et al., 2020; Scharnweber et al., 2020).…”