edu.ucar.opensky::articles:27152 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-24T18:54:34.657341 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7v1290q https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.e3458969 https Related Dataset #1 River discharge and related historical data from the European Flood Awareness System Detecting the human fingerprint in the summer 2022 western–central European soil drought 2024-02-16T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7v1290q https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-131-2024 Schumacher, D. L. author Zachariah, M. author Otto, F. author Barnes, C. author Philip, S. author Kew, S. author Vahlberg, M. author Singh, R. author Heinrich, D. author Arrighi, J. author van Aalst, M. author Hauser, M. author Hirschi, M. author Bessenbacher, V. author Gudmundsson, L. author Beaudoing, H. K. author Rodell, M. author Li, S. author Yang, W. author Vecchi, G. A. author Harrington, L. J. author Lehner, Flavio author Balsamo, G. author Seneviratne, S. I. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher In the 2022 summer, western-central Europe and several other regions in the northern extratropics experienced substantial soil moisture deficits in the wake of precipitation shortages and elevated temperatures. Much of Europe has not witnessed a more severe soil drought since at least the mid-20th century, raising the question whether this is a manifestation of our warming climate. Here, we employ a well-established statistical approach to attribute the low 2022 summer soil moisture to human-induced climate change using observation-driven soil moisture estimates and climate models. We find that in western-central Europe, a June-August root zone soil moisture drought such as in 2022 is expected to occur once in 20 years in the present climate but would have occurred only about once per century during preindustrial times. The entire northern extratropics show an even stronger global warming imprint with a 20-fold soil drought probability increase or higher, but we note that the underlying uncertainty is large. Reasons are manifold but include the lack of direct soil moisture observations at the required spatiotemporal scales, the limitations of remotely sensed estimates, and the resulting need to simulate soil moisture with land surface models driven by meteorological data. Nevertheless, observation-based products indicate long-term declining summer soil moisture for both regions, and this tendency is likely fueled by regional warming, while no clear trends emerge for precipitation. Finally, our climate model analysis suggests that under 2 circle C global warming, 2022-like soil drought conditions would become twice as likely for western-central Europe compared to today and would take place nearly every year across the northern extratropics. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. None eng geoscientificInformation