Summer 2018 was devastating for European farmers. Rainfall levels across much of central Europe were up to 80% less than normal, and temperatures soared to record-breaking levels. Wildfires broke out in Nordic countries and across much of the European continent crops produced their lowest yields in decades.
But this wasn’t the end of it. Parched conditions and soaring temperatures returned to much of Europe in summer 2019 and 2020 too. Now a new study reveals that this multi-year drought has set a new benchmark, gaining itself the unwelcome crown of being the most intense drought event for Europe in the past 250 years.
Poring over climate records dating back to 1766, researchers discovered that the 2018 to 2020 European drought was unprecedented in its intensity, covering more than one-third of the continent for more than two years. Using climate model simulations the researchers show that Europe needs to brace itself for increasingly long and similarly intense droughts, persisting for as long as eight years under the intermediate emissions scenario and a terrifying 25 years in the worst-case scenario. Mitigation and adaptation measures are going to be crucial.
“The 2018–2020 drought event could be considered as a wake-up call on agricultural policies,” the researchers write in their paper published in the journal Earth’s Future.
