Multi-year drought storylines for Europe and North America from an iteratively perturbed global climate model

• DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2022.100512
• Publication Date: 2022-09-27T23:32:11Z
• Authors: Claudia Gessner; Erich M. Fischer; Urs Beyerle; Reto Knutti
• Keywords: Representative Concentration Pathways

Throughout history, Europe and North America have experienced intense long-lasting droughts with large impacts on society ecosystem such as the recent drought 2018/2019 historical 1540 in Europe, or US Dust Bowl of 1930s. To increase resilience develop adaptation strategies to extreme droughts, it is important understand how dry a worst-case would be long take recover from it. This study introduces evaluates methodological framework generate coherent climate model-based storylines different severities for locations. The so-called iterative ensemble resampling method repeatedly runs ensembles only keeps those members, which minimize local precipitation. are developed fully coupled global model CESM1. first part analysis demonstrates feasibility by generating some most possible. Using stringent precipitation criteria, accumulated reduced 80% relative long-term average western 77% central America, respectively, over multiple years. number days Western European storyline corresponds estimates reconstructed Central Europe. low induces soil moisture deficit that physically consistent but beyond high return levels estimated based purely statistically fitted generalized value (GEV) distributions. In second part, used setup assess recovery time deficits. Over driest regions well eastern recovers period few months up more than five years, depending mean atmospheric circulation rather strength deficit. can very rare conduct idealized experiments. When lowering selection criteria precipitation, less likely occur real world. approach help stress test socio-economic system potential periods.