Diverging hydrological drought traits over Europe with global warming

Climate change is anticipated to alter the demand and supply of water at the earth’s surface. Since many societal impacts from a lack of water happen under drought conditions, it is important to understand how droughts may develop with climate change. This study shows how hydrological droughts will change across Europe with increasing global warming levels (GWLs of 1.5, 2, and 3K above preindustrial temperature). We employed a low-flow analysis based on river discharge simulations of the LISFLOOD (De Roo et al., 2000) spatially distributed physically based hydrological and water use model, which was forced with a large ensemble of regional climate model projections under high emissions (RCP8.5) and moderate mitigation (RCP4.5) Representative Concentration Pathways. Different traits of drought, including severity, duration, and frequency, were investigated using the threshold level method. The projected changes in these traits identify four main sub-regions in Europe that are characterized by somehow homogeneous and distinct behaviours with a clear south-west–north-east contrast. The Mediterranean and Boreal sub-regions (defined in Sect. 3.1.1) of Europe show strong but opposite changes at all three GWLs, with the former area mostly characterized by stronger droughts (with larger differences at 3 K), while the latter is expected to experience a reduction in all drought traits. In the Atlantic and Continental sub-regions, the changes are expected to be less marked and characterized by a larger uncertainty, especially at the 1.5 and 2K GWLs. Combining the projections in drought hazard with population and agricultural information shows that with 3K global warming an additional 11 million people and 4.5 million ha of agricultural land are projected to be exposed to droughts every year, on average, with the most affected areas located in the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions of Europe.

CAMMALLERI Carmelo;  NAUMANN Gustavo;  MENTASCHI Lorenzo;  BISSELINK Bernard;  GELATI Emiliano;  DE ROO Arie;  FEYEN Luc; 

2020-12-15

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH

JRC120127

1027-5606 (online),   

https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/24/5919/2020/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC120127,   

10.5194/hess-24-5919-2020 (online),