The Lisflood rainfall-runoff model was forced by the E-OBS (http://www.ecad.eu/download/ensembles/ensembles.php) gridded meteorological dataset in order to produce 5-km resolution maps of root zone soil moisture for the period 1951-2013, which were used to evaluate the presence of significant trends in soil water deficit over Europe. The results of the trend analysis highlighted a clear subdivision of the European domain into two sub-regions: a South-West portion with mostly positive trends (drying of the soil) and a North-East part with decreasing soil water deficit. Overall, about 19% of the domain was affected by a significant linear trend according to the Mann-Kendall test and the false discovery rate (FDR) procedure (p = 0.05), with about 11.6% having a negative (wetting) and 7.6% a positive (drying) slope. A spatial cluster analysis identified 11 major areas (with extension > 10,000 km2) affected by significant trends, including the Ebro and Garonne basins (for positive slopes), and the Dniester watershed (for negative trends). A final analysis at national and sub-national levels highlights that most of the observed trends are also significant when aggregated at regional (NUTS-1) spatial scale, detecting the administrative areas where water management planes are likely most affected. Since drying and wetting processes are occurring mainly in the already driest and wettest sub-areas of the modelling domain, respectively, the obtained results suggest a further polarization of the water deficit in Europe.

CAMMALLERI Carmelo;  MICALE Fabio;  VOGT Juergen; 

2016-11-15

WILEY-BLACKWELL

JRC97973

0899-8418,   

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.4677/full,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC97973,   

10.1002/joc.4677,