Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability

0544219 - ÚVGZ 2022 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Büntgen, Ulf - Urban, Otmar - Krusic, P. J. - Rybníček, Michal - Kolář, Tomáš - Kyncl, T. - Ač, Alexander - Koňasová, E. - Čáslavský, Josef - Esper, Jan - Wagner, S. - Saurer, M. - Tegel, W. - Dobrovolný, Petr - Cherubini, P. - Reinig, F. - Trnka, Miroslav
Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability.
Nature Geoscience. Roč. 14, č. 4 (2021), s. 190-196. ISSN 1752-0894. E-ISSN 1752-0908
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT(CZ) EF16_019/0000797
Institutional support: RVO:86652079
Keywords : stable isotopes * drought * tree rings * climate reconstruction
OECD category: Climatic research
Impact factor: 21.531, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-021-00698-0

Europe's recent summer droughts have had devastating ecological and economic consequences, but the severity and cause of these extremes remain unclear. Here we present 27,080 annually resolved and absolutely dated measurements of tree-ring stable carbon and oxygen (delta C-13 and delta O-18) isotopes from 21 living and 126 relict oaks (Quercus spp.) used to reconstruct central European summer hydroclimate from 75 (BCE) to 2018 (CE). We find that the combined inverse delta C-13 and delta O-18 values correlate with the June-August Palmer Drought Severity Index from 1901-2018 at 0.73 (P < 0.001). Pluvials around 200, 720 and 1100 (CE), and droughts around 40, 590, 950 and 1510 (CE) and in the twenty-first century, are superimposed on a multi-millennial drying trend. Our reconstruction demonstrates that the sequence of recent European summer droughts since 2015 (CE) is unprecedented in the past 2,110 years. This hydroclimatic anomaly is probably caused by anthropogenic warming and associated changes in the position of the summer jet stream.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0321259