Articles | Volume 29, issue 15
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-3795-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-3795-2025
Research article
 | 
15 Aug 2025
Research article |  | 15 Aug 2025

Droughts and media: when and how do the newspapers talk about the droughts in England?

Inhye Kong, Jan Seibert, and Ross S. Purves

Related authors

Locality and transferability: examining pre-built lexicons to elicit landscape values from natural language
Inhye Kong and Ross S. Purves
AGILE GIScience Ser., 5, 33, https://doi.org/10.5194/agile-giss-5-33-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/agile-giss-5-33-2024, 2024

Related subject area

Subject: Water Resources Management | Techniques and Approaches: Instruments and observation techniques
Does peatland rewetting mitigate flooding from extreme rainfall events?
Shirin Karimi, Virginia Mosquera, Eliza Maher Hasselquist, Järvi Järveoja, and Hjalmar Laudon
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2599–2614, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2599-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2599-2025, 2025
Short summary
Phosphorus supply and floodplain design govern phosphorus reduction capacity in remediated agricultural streams
Lukas Hallberg, Faruk Djodjic, and Magdalena Bieroza
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 341–355, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-341-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-341-2024, 2024
Short summary
Transpiration rates from mature Eucalyptus grandis  ×  E. nitens clonal hybrid and Pinus elliottii plantations near the Two Streams Research Catchment, South Africa
Nkosinathi David Kaptein, Colin S. Everson, Alistair David Clulow, Michele Lynn Toucher, and Ilaria Germishuizen
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 4467–4484, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-4467-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-4467-2023, 2023
Short summary
Phenophase-based comparison of field observations to satellite-based actual evaporation estimates of a natural woodland: miombo woodland, southern Africa
Henry Zimba, Miriam Coenders-Gerrits, Kawawa Banda, Bart Schilperoort, Nick van de Giesen, Imasiku Nyambe, and Hubert H. G. Savenije
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 1695–1722, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1695-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1695-2023, 2023
Short summary
Patterns and drivers of water quality changes associated with dams in the Tropical Andes
R. Scott Winton, Silvia López-Casas, Daniel Valencia-Rodríguez, Camilo Bernal-Forero, Juliana Delgado, Bernhard Wehrli, and Luz Jiménez-Segura
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 1493–1505, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1493-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1493-2023, 2023
Short summary

Cited articles

Acheson, E. and Purves, R. S.: Extracting and modeling geographic information from scientific articles, PLoS One, 16, 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244918, 2021. 
Antwi, S. H., Rolston, A., Linnane, S., and Getty, D.: Communicating water availability to improve awareness and implementation of water conservation: A study of the 2018 and 2020 drought events in the Republic of Ireland, Sci. Total Environ., 807, 150865, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150865, 2022. 
Barker, L. J., Hannaford, J., Magee, E., Turner, S., Sefton, C., Parry, S., Evans, J., Szczykulska, M., and Haxton, T.: An appraisal of the severity of the 2022 drought and its impacts, Weather, 79, 208–219, https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.4531, 2024. 
Bayliss, K., Mattioli, G., and Steinberger, J.: Inequality, poverty and the privatization of essential services: A “systems of provision” study of water, energy and local buses in the UK, Compet. Chang., 25, 478–500, https://doi.org/10.1177/1024529420964933, 2021. 
Benoit, K. and Matsuo, A.: spacyr: Wrapper to the “spaCy” “NLP” Library, R package version 1.2.1, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=spacyr (last access: 30 May 2024), 2020. 
Download
Short summary
This study examines the timing and topics of newspaper coverage of droughts in England. Media attention correlated with drought-prone hydroclimatic conditions, particularly low precipitation and low groundwater levels, but also showed a seasonality bias, with more coverage in spring and summer, as exemplified by the 2022 summer drought. The findings reveal complex media dynamics in science communication, suggesting potential gaps in how droughts are framed by scientists versus the media.
Share