Articles | Volume 15, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024
Research article
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16 Feb 2024
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 16 Feb 2024

Detecting the human fingerprint in the summer 2022 western–central European soil drought

Dominik L. Schumacher, Mariam Zachariah, Friederike Otto, Clair Barnes, Sjoukje Philip, Sarah Kew, Maja Vahlberg, Roop Singh, Dorothy Heinrich, Julie Arrighi, Maarten van Aalst, Mathias Hauser, Martin Hirschi, Verena Bessenbacher, Lukas Gudmundsson, Hiroko K. Beaudoing, Matthew Rodell, Sihan Li, Wenchang Yang, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Luke J. Harrington, Flavio Lehner, Gianpaolo Balsamo, and Sonia I. Seneviratne

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Cited articles

Ahmedzade, T., Horton, J., Mwai, P., and Song, W.: China, Europe, US drought: Is 2022 the driest year recorded?, https://www.bbc.com/news/62751110 (last access: 27 February 2023), 2022. 
Al Jazeera: “Historic” drought prompts French government into action, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/5/france-orders-crisis-task-force-over-historic-drought (last access: 13 March 2023), 2022. 
Albergel, C., Rüdiger, C., Pellarin, T., Calvet, J.-C., Fritz, N., Froissard, F., Suquia, D., Petitpa, A., Piguet, B., and Martin, E.: From near-surface to root-zone soil moisture using an exponential filter: an assessment of the method based on in-situ observations and model simulations, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 1323–1337, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-12-1323-2008, 2008. 
Albergel, C., Dorigo, W., Reichle, R. H., Balsamo, G., de Rosnay, P., Muñoz-Sabater, J., Isaksen, L., de Jeu, R., and Wagner, W.: Skill and Global Trend Analysis of Soil Moisture from Reanalyses and Microwave Remote Sensing, J. Hydrometeorol., 13, 1259–1277, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-12-0161.1, 2013. 
Almendra-Martín, L., Martínez-Fernández, J., Piles, M., González-Zamora, Á., Benito-Verdugo, P., and Gaona, J.: Analysis of soil moisture trends in Europe using rank-based and empirical decomposition approaches, Glob. Planet. Change, 215, 103868, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2022.103868, 2022. 
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Chief editor
Agro-ecological drought has so far been subject to comparatively little research in the detection and attribution literature, compared to meteorological drought. Nonetheless, it is of direct relevance for socio-environmental impacts. This paper addresses such knolwedge gap by focussing on a recent major drought event.
Short summary
The 2022 summer was accompanied by widespread soil moisture deficits, including an unprecedented drought in Europe. Combining several observation-based estimates and models, we find that such an event has become at least 5 and 20 times more likely due to human-induced climate change in western Europe and the northern extratropics, respectively. Strong regional warming fuels soil desiccation; hence, projections indicate even more potent future droughts as we progress towards a 2 °C warmer world.
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