Recent European droughts are mostly evaluated within the context of hydroclimatic conditions of the second half of the 20th century. It is thus possible, that recent European drought events are less (or more) severe than previously thought. The XEROS project aims at (1) assessing the extremity of recent European drought events in the perspective of long (i.e., 500-year) benchmark period and (2) improving the process understanding of drought genesis. The underlying analysis will employ a multi-model reconstruction of hydrologic variables using the palaeoclimatic reconstructed driving data. Current state-of-the-art hydrologic/land surface models will be used to estimate spatiotemporal dynamics of the surface and subsurface water component. This will enable an improved understanding of historical characterization of large scale drought events and exploratory analysis of the governing atmospheric parameters influencing the genesis of droughts. Better understanding of the uncertainties in the past will allow to project future hydroclimatic conditions across Europe more reliably.
Find more about the project in our git repository.
Water & Climate 