Changes in drought features at the European  level over the last 120 years

Ionita, Monica; Nagavciuc, Viorica

doi:10.5194/nhess-21-1685-2021

Cited by 81 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Climate change‐induced extreme events, such as prolonged summer droughts or heatwaves, have become more frequent in recent years and are projected to increase in Central Europe (Füssel et al . 2017; Ionita & Nagavciuc 2021; Seneviratne et al . 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 2018 hot drought pushed conifer wood formation to the limit of its plasticity: Consequences for woody biomass production and tree ring structure

et al. 2022

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Hot droughts are expected to increase in Europe and disturb forest ecosystem functioning. Wood formation of trees has the potential to adapt to those events by compensatory mechanisms between the rates and durations of tracheid differentiation to form the typical pattern of vital wood anatomical structures.• We monitored xylogenesis and measured wood anatomy of mature silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) trees along an elevational gradient in the Black Forest during the hot drought year of 2018. We assessed the kinetics of tracheid differentiation and the final tracheid dimensions and quantified the relationship between rates and durations of cell differentiation over the growing season.• Cell differentiation kinetics were decoupled, and temperature and water availability signals were imprinted in the tree ring structure. The sudden decline in woody biomass production provided evidence for a disruption in carbon sequestration processes due to heat and drought stress. Growth processes of Scots pine (pioneer species) were mainly affected by the spring drought, whereas silver fir (climax species) growth processes were more disturbed by the summer drought.• Our study provides novel insights on the plasticity of wood formation and carbon allocation in temperate conifer tree species in response to extreme climatic events.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 2018 hot drought pushed conifer wood formation to the limit of its plasticity: Consequences for woody biomass production and tree ring structure

et al. 2022

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“…With increased temperatures and altered rainfall patterns, the risk of droughts is increasing in Europe. 33 This indicator tracks the frequency of extreme to exceptional seasonal droughts in Europe (1951–2020) with the Standardised Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI6) 34 , which accounts for the impact of precipitation and potential heat-related evapotranspiration. Extreme-to-exceptional drought events were defined as SPEI6 values of –1·6 or less, accumulated over April to September.…”

Section: Section 1: Climate Change Impacts Exposures and Vulnerabilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 2022 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: towards a climate resilient future

Daalen

Romanello

Rocklöv

et al. 2022

The Lancet Public Health

105

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“…Previous studies found divergence in trends of drought characteristics between SPI and SPEI in observations (Stagge et al, 2017;Karimi et al, 2020;Ionita and Nagavciuc, 2021), historical climate simulations (Chiang et al, 2021) and future climate projections (e.g. Arnell and Freeman, 2021;García-Valdecasas Ojeda et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2021;Ogunrinde et al, 2021), with SPEI indicating increased drying compared to SPI.…”

Section: Differences Between Spi and Spei Projectionsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Projected changes in droughts and extreme droughts in Great Britain strongly influenced by the choice of drought index

Reyniers

Osborn

Addor

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. Droughts cause enormous ecological, economical and societal damage, and are already undergoing changes due to anthropogenic climate change. Understanding, anticipating and communicating these changes is essential to a wide range of stakeholders. In this study, the projected impacts of climate change on future atmospheric droughts in Great Britain were assessed for two warming levels (2 °C and 4 °C above pre-industrial levels) using the UKCP18 regional climate projections. As projected changes can be very sensitive to the choice of drought index, two indices were compared: the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI, which unlike the SPI, accounts for increasing potential evapotranspiration). The SPI and SPEI were used to quantify drought frequency, extent and duration of all droughts and of only extreme droughts. To provide context, aridity and seasonal precipitation and potential evapotranspiration changes were also assessed, as well as seasonal contributions to dryness at a yearly time scale. The UKCP18 regional simulations project (strongly) increasing drought frequency and extent due to climate change based on the SP(E)I almost everywhere in Great Britain. Importantly, the relative increase in frequency and extent is much more pronounced for extreme droughts than for more moderate droughts. Increasing longer-term dry conditions can be attributed mostly to more frequent dry and extremely dry summers, for which normal to wet winters are decreasingly able to compensate (even where winters are projected to become wetter). In general, using the SPEI results in far greater increases in drought frequency and extent than using the SPI. These differences are so substantive that at +2 °C the SPEI6-based projected changes reach a similar magnitude to the SPI6-based changes at +4 °C. Finally, projected changes in the distribution of drought durations depend on the drought index, region and warming level. These results illustrate that the choice of atmospheric drought index can have a decisive influence on changes in projected drought characteristics, and therefore users of these indices should be aware of the importance of potential evapotranspiration in their intended context when choosing a drought index. The stark differences between SPI- and SPEI-based projections highlight the need to understand the interplay between increasing atmospheric evaporative demand and moisture availability under a changing climate.

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Changes in drought features at the European level over the last 120 years

Cited by 81 publications

References 49 publications

The 2018 hot drought pushed conifer wood formation to the limit of its plasticity: Consequences for woody biomass production and tree ring structure

The 2018 hot drought pushed conifer wood formation to the limit of its plasticity: Consequences for woody biomass production and tree ring structure

The 2022 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: towards a climate resilient future

Projected changes in droughts and extreme droughts in Great Britain strongly influenced by the choice of drought index

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