The Drought in Europe From 2018 to 2020 Was the Most Severe in Over 250 Years

The dry spell from 2018 to 2020 was a series of days, months, and years that many people will remember.

The historical dimensions of this event have been classified by an international team of researchers led by experts from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ).

According to their results, no drought spanning such a vast region and coinciding with higher temperatures has happened in Europe since the middle of the 18th century.

Thus, the years 2018 to 2020 set a new standard for droughts.

Because such an exceptional occurrence is expected to occur more frequently in the future, scientists encourage the formulation and deployment of appropriate, regionally tailored drought avoidance strategies.

Intense drought event

(Photo : HAIDAR INDHAR/AFP via Getty Images)

The drought years of 2018, 2019, and 2020 were extraordinary and had significant repercussions on the environment and the economy, withered meadows and farms, dry stream beds, dead woods, and reduced power plant outputs.

It was previously unclear where they should be categorized in terms of their historical dimension.

According to Dr. Oldrich Rakovec, UFZ modeler and primary author of the paper published in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth's Future, the drought from 2018 to 2020 establishes a new standard for droughts in Europe, as per ScienceDaily.

The scientists proved this using a wide collection of data and modeling approaches that allowed them to reconstruct past droughts dating back to 1766 and compare their extents to the drought from 2018 to 2020.

Only the drought from 1857 to 1860 lasted longer in history, with a mean duration of 13 months.

Drought is defined by scientists as a period in which the present soil-water content in the top 2-m soil falls below a level achieved just 20% of the time over the last 250 years.

The scientists utilized the UFZ's mHM hydrologic model to reconstruct these previous droughts.

This environmental model, among other things, may be used to predict soil moisture content based on previous temperature and precipitation information.

Also Read: Drought in Western US Could Last Until 2030 Due to Climate Change

The rapid increase in droughts was especially concerning for agriculture and forestry

Dr. Mrislav Trnka of the CzechGlobe research center in Brno, who'd been part of the study team, said the steep increase in dryness was especially concerning for agriculture and forestry.

He claimed that unprecedented forest dieback throughout most of Central Europe backs up his findings.

According to Oxford University's Dr. Friederike Otto, a lack of historical data frequently impedes the unambiguous identification of the causes of observed occurrences, making the new work significant and beneficial.

A study result showed that the massive rise in heat intensities observed throughout Europe in the summer, which has been attributable to human-induced climate change, does influence the nature of warmer months in Europe, she added.

The researchers examined 27,000 growth rings from 147 oak trees in their study, which was published in the journal Nature Geoscience, as per The Guardian.

For the final century, live oaks were used, followed by timber from historic buildings such as churches.

The researchers utilized oak that had been kept in river deposits or gravel beds during the Middle Ages, and timber used to construct wells during the Roman period.

Previous tree-ring climate reconstructions employed width and wood density to calculate the temperature.

The Büntgen-led study employed carbon and oxygen isotope readings to demonstrate how much water was accessible to the trees, providing a record of droughts.

This demonstrated that the current high frequency of European droughts was unexpected.