Early spring droughts in Central Europe: Indications for atmospheric and oceanic drivers

Central Europa has faced particularly dry early springs recently. Droughts in March and April are causing substantial impacts along the hydrological cycle. Especially agriculture is vulnerable at the beginning of the growing season, when sufficient moisture supply is demanded. In a recently published paper (Haslinger and Mayer 2023), we establish a link between early spring precipitation anomalies for the period 1860-2020 over Central Europe and driving large-scale atmospheric circulation conditions. Two major drought events were identified within this period, a recent one from 2005 to 2020 (and ongoing) and one within the 20^th century from 1926 to 1950 with sustained negative precipitation anomalies in early spring, accompanied by two additional minor events. These were associated with the East Atlantic/Western Russia surface air pressure pattern in its positive phase, having a positive pressure anomaly extending over the British Isles and southwards to Central Europe and a negative anomaly over northwestern Russia. Consistent with literature, this pattern was identified as the main driver for early spring droughts. From further explorative analysis we inferred, that positive anomalies in sea surface temperatures in the western Atlantic lead to a Rossby wave response, resembling the East Atlantic/Western Russia pattern. These warming patterns follow internal Atlantic multidecadal variability. But, anthropogenic warming appears to be superimposed due to a weakening of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation leading to stronger warming in the western Atlantic.

The presented study was published in Atmospheric Science Letters:

Haslinger, K., & Mayer, K. (2023). Early spring droughts in Central Europe: Indications for atmospheric and oceanic drivers. Atmospheric Science Letters, 24 (2), e1136. https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.1136