Articles | Volume 26, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1527-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1527-2022
Research article
 | Highlight paper
 | 
22 Mar 2022
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 22 Mar 2022

Evaporation enhancement drives the European water-budget deficit during multi-year droughts

Christian Massari, Francesco Avanzi, Giulia Bruno, Simone Gabellani, Daniele Penna, and Stefania Camici

Data sets

E-OBS ECA&D https://www.ecad.eu/download/ensembles/download.php#datafiles

ERA5 data Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

Download
Short summary
Droughts are a creeping disaster, meaning that their onset, duration and recovery are challenging to monitor and forecast. Here, we provide further evidence of an additional challenge of droughts, i.e. the fact that the deficit in water supply during droughts is generally much more than expected based on the observed decline in precipitation. At a European scale we explain this with enhanced evapotranspiration, sustained by higher atmospheric demand for moisture during such dry periods.