This Chapter of the "Science for Disaster Risk Management 2017" publication of the DRMKC provides an detailed review of the drought risk in Europe and globally and outlines possible ways forward.
Adequate drought risk management requires practitioners and policy makers to distinguish between different drought types (meteorological, soil moisture and hydrological droughts). Drought as a natural hazard needs further to be distinguished from aridity or man-induced water scarcity (water use > availability). While drought is triggered by climate variability (precipitation and temperature controls), understanding river basin control and societies vulnerabilities are essential to assess the risk for many of the impacted sectors.
Reports on historic trends of major meteorological droughts since the 1950s show that their frequency and severity has increased in the southern part of Europe and decreased in the northern part, with a more variable pattern in central Europe. Climate change studies project longer, more frequent and severe meteorological droughts in southern Europe, especially in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, whereas the opposite is expected for northern Europe. Studies on soil moisture and hydrological drought generally confirm this pattern, although some studies illustrate that the magnitude of change also depends on possible adaptation measures.
Drought-related impacts have been reported for many sectors across Europe (e.g. farming and livestock, public water supply, industries, power generation, commercial shipping, recreation, forestry, health, wildfires, ecosystems and biodiversity) and several studies have tried to link drought impacts to drought severity (measured in different ways). Finally, health impacts related to malnutrition, water-, and dust-related diseases, vector-borne diseases, and mental conditions need to be considered.
Since drought cannot be prevented, societies need to adapt to the hazard by decreasing their vulnerabilities. Drought vulnerability across Europe has been assessed, for example, through the analysis of adaptive capacity or a set of economic, social and infrastructural factors. This led to an estimated area of slightly over 20% with a high to very high vulnerability across Europe, home to about 37% of the European population.
A pro-active drought management is based upon adequate drought policies, drought management plans, detailed risk assessments and an adequate early warning system, including continuous drought monitoring and forecasting. In order to obtain drought risk maps, hazard, exposure and (sectorial) vulnerability (or reported impacts) need to be combined.
VAN LANEN Henny;
VOGT Juergen;
ANDREU Joaquin;
SAIOTE CARRAO Hugo Miguel;
DE STEFANO Lucia;
DUTRA Emanuel;
FEYEN Luc;
FORZIERI Giovanni;
HAYES Michael;
IGLESIAS Ana;
LAVAYSSE Christophe;
NAUMANN Gustavo;
PULWARTY Roger;
SPINONI Jonathan;
STAHL Kerstin;
STEFANSKI Robert;
STILIANAKIS Nikolaos;
SVOBODA Marc;
TALLAKSEN Lena;
2017-11-15
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC108564
978-92-79-606678-6,
978-92-79-606679-3,
1018-5593,
1831-9424,
https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4bc0e055-3712-11e7-a08e-01aa75ed71a1/language-en,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC108564,
10.2788/688605,
10.2788/842809,
