Quantifying impacts of the drought 2018 on European ecosystems in comparison to 2003
Allan Buras, Anja Rammig, Christian S. Zang

TL;DR
This study compares the 2018 European drought with the 2003 event, analyzing atmospheric and climatic factors and their impacts on ecosystems using remote sensing, revealing unprecedented drought effects and ecosystem sensitivities.
Contribution
It provides a detailed quantification of the 2018 drought's causes and impacts, comparing it to 2003, and highlights heterogeneous ecosystem responses across Europe.
Findings
2018 drought was characterized by a climatic dipole with hot/dry north and cooler/moist south.
Significant positive effects of climatic water balance on ecosystem productivity.
Larger area affected in 2018 compared to 2003; pastures and arable land more sensitive than forests.
Abstract
In recent decades, an increasing persistence of atmospheric circulation patterns has been observed. In the course of the associated long-lasting anticyclonic summer circulations, heat waves and drought spells often coincide, leading to so-called hotter droughts. Previous hotter droughts caused a decrease in agricultural yields and increase in tree mortality, and thus, had a remarkable effect on carbon budgets and negative economic impacts. Consequently, a quantification of ecosystem responses to hotter droughts and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms is crucial. In this context, the European hotter drought of the year 2018 may be considered as a key event. As a first step towards the quantification of its causes and consequences, we here assess anomalies of atmospheric circulation patterns, temperature loads, and climatic water balance as potential drivers of ecosystem…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
