droughts – HEPEX

ZOOMing into the Age of Digital Collaborations

January 19, 2023 Ilias Pechlivanidis Comments 0 Comment

Contributed by Bart van Osnabrugge, Antara Dasgupta, Louise Arnal, Rebecca Emerton and Shaun Harrigan Are physical meetings strictly necessary to foster effective collaborations? The Context Hearing the laments about online conferences, limited interactions and zoom fatigue, it seems easy to go with the answer “yes they are”. Yes, meeting in person is fun and makes connecting a lot easier. There is no rivalling going out for dinner or partying after a full day of presentations. However, the virtual world also offers…

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Can we foresee drought and its impacts?

December 18, 2019 Rebecca Emerton Comments 0 Comment

Contributed by Samuel J. Sutanto and Henny A.J. Van Lanen; Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. The 2018 and 2019 droughts are still fresh in our memory, when extended areas in Europe suffered, once more, from extreme drought. Climate projection studies show that drought very likely will become more frequent. Similar to the 2015 drought (Van Lanen et al., 2016), impacts of the 2018 drought in Europe were tremendous and affected many sectors. For example, farmers…

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Data Drought and Data Flood

July 17, 2019 Rebecca Emerton Comments 0 Comment

Contributed by Mark Trigg*. It’s hot, and very, very dry. The rains have failed, and the animals are dying. Around the table people are concerned that it will be people dying next. The cycle seems to repeat every 10 years and the response is exactly the same, every time – we must do something and save lives. “Drill more boreholes and put in big pumps and generators”, someone cries, “no matter the cost!”. A timid voice rises above the ongoing…

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Drought Observatory: a Climate Service to improve environmental resilience

January 23, 2019 Rebecca Emerton Comments 0 Comment

Contributed by Ramona Magno, IBIMET-CNR, Italy. Drought is a creeping and complex phenomenon with different types of impacts that imply a general reduction of water availability and involve either energy or food sectors, and on a wider scale the ecosystems. Under a climate change framework, the increasing frequency of droughts and their extended persistence need to be accounted for, addressing both adaptation and mitigation strategies. Drought dynamics reveal a time gap between the onset of a drought event and the…

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Summer 2018 in Europe: did the EFAS seasonal outlook predict low river flows?

September 6, 2018 Rebecca Emerton Comments 0 Comment

— this post is jointly published on the blogs of HEPEX and the European Drought Centre — Contributed by Louise Arnal (ECMWF and University of Reading), Shaun Harrigan (ECMWF) & David Lavers (ECMWF). Summer 2018 in Europe was remarkable from a hydroclimate perspective, with large regions experiencing persistent dry conditions, very little to no rainfall for extended periods, a series of heatwaves with record-breaking temperatures and numerous wildfires (in the UK, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Latvia and Germany, among others)….

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