Text-mining uncovers the unique dynamics of socio-economic impacts during multi-year drought

Abstract

Abstract. Droughts often lead to cross-sectoral and interconnected socio-economic impacts, affecting human well-being, ecosystems, and economic development. During extended drought periods, such as the 2018–2022 event in Germany, these impacts are amplified due to temporal carry-over effects. Yet, our understanding of drought impact dynamics during increasingly frequent multi-year drought periods is still in its infancy. In this study, we analyze the socio-economic impacts of the 2018–2022 multi-year drought in Germany and compare them to previous single-year events. Leveraging text-mining tools, we derive a dataset covering impacts reported by 260 newspapers on agriculture, forestry, livestock, waterways, aquaculture, fire, and social impacts spanning 2000 to 2022. We introduce the concept of drought impact profiles (DIPs) to describe spatio-temporal patterns of the reported co-occurrences of impacts. We employ a clustering algorithm to detect these DIPs and then use sequence mining, visualization techniques statistical tests to analyze spatio-temporal trends. Our results reveal that the 2018–2022 multi-year drought event had distinct impact patterns compared to prior single-year droughts regarding their spatial extent, impact diversity, and prevalent impact types. For the multi-year drought period, we identify shifts in how impacts have been perceived regionally, especially focusing on legacy and cascading effects on forestry and social activities. Also, we show how regional differences in relevant impacts are controlled by different land-cover types. Our findings enhance the understanding of the dynamic nature of drought impacts, highlighting the potential of text-mining techniques to study drought impact dynamics. The insights gained underscore the need for different strategies in managing multi-year droughts compared to single-year events.

Flash droughts and their impacts -using newspaper articles to assess the perceived consequences of rapidly emerging droughts

“…FDs are becoming increasingly frequent under climate change, and require different adaptation schemes owing to their rapid emergence (Yuan et al 2023;Christian, Hobbins, et al 2024). In this regard, we investigated the occurrence of FDs in Germany, as well as societal awareness (Kam, Stowers, and S. Kim 2019) and perceived impacts (Sodoge et al 2023). Using these digital trace data, our study shows the delayed response of social perception to FDs as reported in the media and according to online search behavior.…”

“…Socio-economic impact data To assess the perceived impacts of flash droughts on different socio-economic sectors, we used information on reported socio-economic impacts in newspaper articles. Specifically, we used the approach and data by Sodoge et al (2023), which consider the frequency of newspaper articles reporting on a specific drought impact using text-mining tools. Therefore, we examined approximately 50,000 newspaper articles that included terms related to conventional drought (e.g.…”

“…We then selected the regional cluster with the highest frequency of detected locations. A previous study by Sodoge et al (2023) provided a detailed description of this procedure, including extensive validation with external indicators and observed impacts such as crop yield losses, forest fire statistics, and precipitation deficit.…”

“…Newspapers often serve as real-time recorders of societal responses and reactions to extreme weather events (e.g. Sodoge et al 2023;Bogdanovich et al 2024), offering a unique perspective on the social impacts of FDs. Similarly, internet searches can approximate public awareness of a specific topic (Kam, Stowers, and S. Kim 2019;Yesuel Kim and Youngchul Kim 2023).…”

“…To test whether digital trace data (e.g., news articles and Google searches) can support the identification of FD occurrence, we considered the case of Germany from 2000 to 2022. Germany was chosen as a case study because of its recent history of major conventional droughts (2003, 2015, and 2018-2022) that had widespread impacts on sectors such as agriculture, forestry, livestock, and waterways navigation, which have gained public attention (Rakovec et al 2022;Tijdeman and Menzel 2021;Sodoge et al 2023). We obtained daily time series for biophysical FD occurrence, reported impacts in newspapers, and online search behavior on a district level in Germany.…”