Abstract
The questions of scale, limit, and areal extent are central points for any drought assessment effort. Drought indices, such as the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), are assisting to demarcate drought characteristics and spatial extent. The current approach utilizes the E-OBS gridded dataset's hydro-climatic parameters (precipitation, minimum and maximum temperature) for applying SPI and SPEI on a Pan-European scale for a detail drought assessment during the 1969–2018 period. The two indices are estimated for the 6 and 12-month scales. In this effort, drought is defined as an event that has index value less than minus 1.5 for at least three consecutive months. Based on this, drought characteristics (frequency, duration, and severity) are derived. The results are displayed in 5-year windows and they are also assessed against independently recorded droughts as occurred. Overall, it may be reported that there has been little change in drought characteristics over the past 50 years in Europe. Furthermore, given the variety of climatic locales on a continental level, the 6 and 12-month time scales for both indices may offer an improvement on drought critical areas identification, threshold definitions, and comparability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bachmair S, Kohn I, Stahl K (2015) Exploring the link between drought indicators and impacts. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 15:1381–1397. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-15-1381-2015
Beguería S, Vicente-Serrano SM (2017) SPEI: calculation of the standardised precipitation-evapotranspiration index. R package version 1.7. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=SPEI
Bissolli P, Ziese M, Pietzsch S, Finger P, Friedrich K, Nitsche H, Obregón A (2012) Drought conditions in Europe in the spring of 2012. Dtsch Wetterd 30
Blauhut V, Stahl K, Stagge JH, Tallaksen LM, De Stefano L, Vogt J (2016) Estimating drought risk across Europe from reported drought impacts, drought indices, and vulnerability factors. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 20:2779–2800. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2779-2016
Brázdil R, Kiss A, Luterbacher J, Nash DJ, Řezníčková L (2018) Documentary data and the study of past droughts: a global state of the art. Clim Past 14:1915–1960. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1915-2018
Brito SSB, Cunha APMA, Cunningham CC, Alvalá RC, Marengo JA, Carvalho MA (2018) Frequency, duration and severity of drought in the semiarid Northeast Brazil region. Int J Climatol 38:517–529. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5225
Cabrinha V, Santo FE (2000) Drought tendencies in mainland Portugal. In: Wilhite DA, Sivakumar MVK, Wood DA (eds) Early Warning Systems for Drought Preparedness and Drought Management. Proceedings of an Expert Group Meeting held in Lisbon, Portugal, 5–7 September 2000. World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 169–181
Core Team R (2019) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna
Cornes RC, van der Schrier G, van den Besselaar EJM, Jones PD (2018) An ensemble version of the E-OBS temperature and precipitation data sets. J Geophys Res-Atmos 123:9391–9409. https://doi.org/10.1029/2017JD028200
Dai A (2013) Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models. Nat Clim Chang 3:52–58. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1633
Di Liberto T (2018) A hot, dry summer has led to drought in Europe in 2018. In: NOAA Clim. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/hot-dry-summer-has-led-drought-europe-2018. Accessed 18 Oct 2018
DMCSEE (2019) DMCSEE drought watch tool. In: DMCSEE Drought Manag. Cent. Southeast. Eur. - Drought Monit. http://www.dmcsee.org/en/drought_monitor/.
Documento.gr (2017) Οι καυτοί Ιούληδες και ο φονικός καύσωνας του 1987. In: Documento.gr. https://www.documentonews.gr/article/oi-kaytoi-ioylhdes-kai-o-fonikos-kayswnas-toy-1987-ta-kalokairia-poy-emeinan-sthn-istoria.
Dronin NM, Bellinger EG (2005) Climate dependence and food problems in Russia, 1900–1990: the interaction of climate and agricultural policy and their effect on food problems, NED-new edition, 1. Central European University Press
Droogers P, Allen RG (2002) Estimating reference evapotranspiration under inaccurate data conditions. Irrig Drain Syst 16:33–45. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015508322413
EC (2007) Addressing the challenge of water scarcity and droughts in the European Union: impact assessment. European Commission, Brussels
EC (2018) Drought in Europe. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/news/drought-europe-2018-aug-30_en.
EEA (1999) Environment in the European Union at the turn of the century. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg
EEA (2010) Mapping the impacts of natural hazards and technological accidents in Europe: an overview of the last decade. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg
EEA (2015) The European environment — state and outlook 2015: assessment of global megatrends. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxemburg
EU (2016) Europe hit by one of the worst droughts since 2003. In: EU Sci. Hub - Eur. Comm. https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/europe-hit-one-worst-droughts-2003. Accessed 29 Sep 2019
Golubev G, Dronin N (2004) Geography of droughts and food problems in Russia (1900–2000). Center for Environmental Systems Research. University of Kassel, Kassel
González-Hidalgo JC, Vicente-Serrano SM, Peña-Angulo D, Salinas C, Tomas-Burguera M, Beguería S (2018) High-resolution spatio-temporal analyses of drought episodes in the western Mediterranean basin (Spanish mainland, Iberian Peninsula). Acta Geophys 66:381–392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-018-0138-x
Grigg NS (2014) The 2011–2012 drought in the United States: new lessons from a record event. Int J Water Resour Dev 30:183–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2013.847710
Grigg NS, Vlachos EC (1993) Drought and water-supply management: roles and responsibilities. J Water Resour Plan Manag 119:531–541. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9496(1993)119:5(531)
Hamer M (1990) The year the taps ran dry. New Sci 1730:20–21
Hanel M, Rakovec O, Markonis Y, Máca P, Samaniego L, Kyselý J, Kumar R (2018) Revisiting the recent European droughts from a long-term perspective. Sci Rep 8:9499. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27464-4
Hargreaves GH (1994) Defining and using reference evapotranspiration. J Irrig Drain Eng 120:1132–1139. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9437(1994)120:6(1132)
Hayes MJ, Alvord C, Lowrey J (2002) Drought indices. University of Nebraska, National Drought Mitigation Center
Hijmans RJ (2018) Raster: geographic data analysis and modeling. R package version 2.7–15
IPCC (2014) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.AA. Meyer (eds.)]. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, Switzerland
Karavitis CA (1999) Decision support Systems for Drought Management Strategies in metropolitan Athens. Water Int 24:10–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508069908692129
Karavitis CA, Chortaria C, Alexandris SG, Vasilakou CG, Tsesmelis DE (2012) Development of the standardised precipitation index for Greece. Urban Water J 9:401–417. https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2012.690431
Karavitis CA, Tsesmelis DE, Skondras NA, Stamatakos D, Alexandris S, Fassouli V, Vasilakou CG, Oikonomou PD, Gregorič G, Grigg NS, Vlachos EC (2014) Linking drought characteristics to impacts on a spatial and temporal scale. Water Policy 16:1172–1197. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2014.205
Keyantash J, Dracup JA (2002) The quantification of drought: an evaluation of drought indices. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 83:1167–1180. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477-83.8.1167
Khadr M, Morgenschweis G, Schlenkhoff A (2009) Analysis of meteorological drought in the Ruhr Basin by using the standardized precipitation index. Int J Environ Ecol Eng 3:291–300
Lloyd-Hughes B, Saunders MA (2002) A drought climatology for Europe. Int J Climatol 22:1571–1592. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.846
Lorenzo-Lacruz J, Vicente-Serrano SM, López-Moreno JI, Beguería S, García-Ruiz JM, Cuadrat JM (2010) The impact of droughts and water management on various hydrological systems in the headwaters of the Tagus River (Central Spain). J Hydrol 386:13–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.01.001
Maia R, Vivas E, Serralheiro R, de Carvalho M (2015) Socioeconomic evaluation of drought effects. Main principles and application to Guadiana and Algarve case studies. Water Resour Manag 29:575–588. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-014-0883-9
Marsh T, Cole G, Wilby R (2007) Major droughts in England and Wales, 1800–2006. Weather 62:87–93. https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.67
Martins DS, Raziei T, Paulo AA, Pereira LS (2012) Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation and drought in Portugal. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 12:1493–1501. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-12-1493-2012
McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In: Proceedings of the 8th conference on applied climatology. American Meteorological Society Boston, Boston, pp 179–183
Noone S, Broderick C, Duffy C, Matthews T, Wilby RL, Murphy C (2017) A 250-year drought catalogue for the island of Ireland (1765–2015). Int J Climatol 37:239–254. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4999
Oikonomou PD (2017) Methodologies for transforming data to information and advancing the understanding of water resources systems towards integrated water resources management. Ph.D. Dissertation, Colorado State University, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Oikonomou PD, Waskom RM (2018) Assessing drought vulnerability in Northeast Colorado. Washington D.C, USA
Oikonomou PD, Karavitis CA, Kolokytha E (2018) Multi-index drought assessment in Europe. Proceedings 7:20. https://doi.org/10.3390/ECWS-3-05822
Oikonomou PD, Tsesmelis DE, Waskom RM, Grigg NS, Karavitis CA (2019) Enhancing the standardized drought vulnerability index by integrating spatiotemporal information from satellite and in situ data. J Hydrol 569:265–277. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.11.058
Pierce D (2017) ncdf4: Interface to Unidata netCDF (version 4 or earlier) format data files. R package version 1.16
Plate T, Heiberger R (2016) Abind: combine multidimensional arrays. R package version 1.4–5
Samaniego L, Kumar R, Zink M (2013) Implications of parameter uncertainty on soil moisture drought analysis in Germany. J Hydrometeorol 14:47–68. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-12-075.1
Santos JF, Pulido-Calvo I, Portela MM (2010) Spatial and temporal variability of droughts in Portugal. Water Resour Res 46. https://doi.org/10.1029/2009WR008071
Serrano-Notivoli R, Beguería S, de Luis M (2019) STEAD: a high-resolution daily gridded temperature dataset for Spain. Earth Syst Sci Data 11:1171–1188. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1171-2019
Sheffield J, Wood EF, Roderick ML (2012) Little change in global drought over the past 60 years. Nature 491:435–438. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11575
Spinoni J, Naumann G, Carrao H, Barbosa P, Vogt J (2014) World drought frequency, duration, and severity for 1951–2010. Int J Climatol 34:2792–2804. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3875
Spinoni J, Naumann G, Vogt JV, Barbosa P (2015) The biggest drought events in Europe from 1950 to 2012. J Hydrol Reg Stud 3:509–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2015.01.001
Spinoni J, Naumann G, Vogt JV (2017) Pan-European seasonal trends and recent changes of drought frequency and severity. Glob Planet Chang 148:113–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.11.013
Stagge JH, Tallaksen LM, Gudmundsson L, Van Loon AF, Stahl K (2015) Candidate distributions for climatological drought indices (SPI and SPEI). Int J Climatol 35:4027–4040. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4267
Stagge JH, Kingston DG, Tallaksen LM, Hannah DM (2017) Observed drought indices show increasing divergence across Europe. Sci Rep 7:14045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14283-2
Trenberth KE, Dai A, van der Schrier G, Jones PD, Barichivich J, Briffa KR, Sheffield J (2014) Global warming and changes in drought. Nat Clim Chang 4:17–22. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2067
Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2004) Towards a drought watch system based on spatial SPI. Water Resour Manag 18:1–12
Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional drought assessment based on the reconnaissance drought index (RDI). Water Resour Manag 21:821–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-006-9105-4
Tsesmelis DE, Karavitis CA, Oikonomou PD, Alexandris S, Kosmas C (2019a) Assessment of the vulnerability to drought and desertification characteristics using the standardized drought vulnerability index (SDVI) and the environmentally sensitive areas index (ESAI). Resources 8:6. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources8010006
Tsesmelis DE, Oikonomou PD, Vasilakou CG, Skondras NA, Fassouli V, Alexandris SG, Grigg NS, Karavitis CA (2019b) Assessing structural uncertainty caused by different weighting methods on the standardized drought vulnerability index (SDVI). Stoch Env Res Risk A 33:515–533. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-019-01648-4
Van Lanen HAJ, Wanders N, Tallaksen LM, Van Loon AF (2013) Hydrological drought across the world: impact of climate and physical catchment structure. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 17:1715–1732. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-1715-2013
Vicente-Serrano SM, Beguería S (2016) Comment on ‘candidate distributions for climatological drought indices (SPI and SPEI)’ by James H. Stagge et al. Int J Climatol 36:2120–2131. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4474
Vicente-Serrano SM, Beguería S, López-Moreno JI (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23:1696–1718. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009JCLI2909.1
Vidal J-P, Martin E, Franchistéguy L, Habets F, Soubeyroux J-M, Blanchard M, Baillon M (2010) Multilevel and multiscale drought reanalysis over France with the Safran-Isba-Modcou hydrometeorological suite. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 14:459–478. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-14-459-2010
Vlachos EC (1982) Drought management interfaces. Annual American Society of Civil Engineers Conference, Las Vegas, p 15
Wickham H (2011) The Split-apply-combine strategy for data analysis. J Stat Softw 40:1–29
WMO (2019) WMO region VI (Europe, continent only): highest temperature. In: World Weather Clim. Extrem. Arch. https://wmo.asu.edu/content/europe-highest-temperature. Accessed 17 Aug 2019
World Bank (2018) The impacts of the El Niño and La Niña on large grain producing countries in ECA: yield, Poverty and Policy Response. World Bank, Washington, DC
Wu H, Svoboda MD, Hayes MJ, Wilhite DA, Wen F (2007) Appropriate application of the standardized precipitation index in arid locations and dry seasons. Int J Climatol 27:65–79. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1371
Yevjevich V (1969) An objective approach to definitions and investigations of continental hydrologic droughts. Colorado State University, Fort Collins
Zarch MAA, Sivakumar B, Sharma A (2015) Droughts in a warming climate: a global assessment of standardized precipitation index (SPI) and reconnaissance drought index (RDI). J Hydrol 526:183–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.09.071
Acknowledgments
P.D.O. would like to acknowledge the partial support by the National Science Foundation under VT EPSCoR Grant No. NSF OIA 1556770.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
None.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Oikonomou, P.D., Karavitis, C.A., Tsesmelis, D.E. et al. Drought Characteristics Assessment in Europe over the Past 50 Years. Water Resour Manage 34, 4757–4772 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-020-02688-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-020-02688-0