Evidence of increasing drought severity caused by temperature rise in southern Europe

We use high quality climate data from ground meteorological stations in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) and robust drought indices to confirm that drought severity has increased in the past five decades, as a consequence of greater atmospheric evaporative demand resulting from temperature rise. Increased...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2014-04, Vol.9 (4), p.44001-9
Main Authors: Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M, Lopez-Moreno, Juan-I, Beguería, Santiago, Lorenzo-Lacruz, Jorge, Sanchez-Lorenzo, Arturo, García-Ruiz, José M, Azorin-Molina, Cesar, Morán-Tejeda, Enrique, Revuelto, Jesús, Trigo, Ricardo, Coelho, Fatima, Espejo, Francisco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric water
climatic change
Climatic data
Drought
Drought index
Environmental impact
Evapotranspiration
Ground stations
Hydrologic data
Hydrology
River discharge
River flow
Rivers
Semi arid areas
Semiarid zones
Stream discharge
Stream flow
streamflow
Temperature effects
Water demand
water resources
Water supply
Weather stations
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Summary:We use high quality climate data from ground meteorological stations in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) and robust drought indices to confirm that drought severity has increased in the past five decades, as a consequence of greater atmospheric evaporative demand resulting from temperature rise. Increased drought severity is independent of the model used to quantify the reference evapotranspiration. We have also focused on drought impacts to drought-sensitive systems, such as river discharge, by analyzing streamflow data for 287 rivers in the IP, and found that hydrological drought frequency and severity have also increased in the past five decades in natural, regulated and highly regulated basins. Recent positive trend in the atmospheric water demand has had a direct influence on the temporal evolution of streamflows, clearly identified during the warm season, in which higher evapotranspiration rates are recorded. This pattern of increase in evaporative demand and greater drought severity is probably applicable to other semiarid regions of the world, including other Mediterranean areas, the Sahel, southern Australia and South Africa, and can be expected to increasingly compromise water supplies and cause political, social and economic tensions among regions in the near future.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/9/4/044001