Severity and impacts of Central European droughts, heatwaves and wildfires in the 21st century

Droughts, heatwaves and wildfires represent an increasing risk for both human society and the environment. Despite Southern Europe being assumed as one of the most endangered regions, ongoing recent climate change negatively influences the intensity, duration and impacts of these extreme events in Central European countries as well. Therefore, here we present a newly compiled database of droughts, heatwaves and wildfires in the Central European region spanning the 2000–2023 period. The database, based primarily on newspaper and online media reports, provides information about the occurrence and length of more than 800 extreme events, affected area, their impacts and societal responses. On the basis of newly available data, two severity indices were calculated, and the severity of individual events was evaluated according to several characteristics. Despite the differences among the individual countries (climate conditions, landscape, population, GDP), similar impacts and societal responses to extreme events could be observed. Several events (e.g. drought in 2019 or heatwaves and wildfires in 2022) had serious cross-border effects, too. Analysis of these extreme weather events allowed to reveal several joint patterns (increased mortality rate, household water supply issues, rising food prices) as well as weaknesses on the international level (e.g. lack of available firefighting equipment during large wildfires) during the occurrence of individual extreme events across Central Europe. Obtained results support an urgent necessity to develop a forecasting tool for the occurrence of drought, heatwave and wildfire events in the Central European region and implement it in the national forecasting services to reduce the negative impacts of these extreme events.

This research is supported by the OP JAK funding under Grant No. CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004635 “Advanced methods of greenhouse gases emission reduction and sequestration in agriculture and forest landscape for climate change mitigation (AdAgriF)”.