Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Observational evidence for soil-moisture impact on hot extremes in southeastern Europe

Nature Geoscience volume 4, pages 17–21 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Climate change is expected to affect not only the means of climatic variables, but also their variabilities1,2 and extremes such as heat waves2,3,4,5,6. In particular, modelling studies have postulated a possible impact of soil-moisture deficit and drought on hot extremes7,8,9,10,11. Such effects could be responsible for impending changes in the occurrence of heat waves in Europe7. Here we analyse observational indices based on measurements at 275 meteorological stations in central and southeastern Europe, and on publicly available gridded observations12. We find a relationship between soil-moisture deficit, as expressed by the standardized precipitation index13, and summer hot extremes in southeastern Europe. This relationship is stronger for the high end of the distribution of temperature extremes. We compare our results with simulations of current climate models and find that the models correctly represent the soil-moisture impacts on temperature extremes in southeastern Europe, but overestimate them in central Europe. Given the memory associated with soil moisture storage, our findings may help with climate-change-adaptation measures, such as early-warning and prediction tools for extreme heat waves.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Station observations and analysis domains.
Figure 2: Hot extremes versus SPI.
Figure 3: Quantile regression analysis.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Katz, R. W. & Brown, B. G. Extreme events in a changing climate: Variability is more important than averages. Clim. Change 21, 289–302 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Schär, C. et al. The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves. Nature 427, 332–336 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Meehl, G. A. & Tebaldi, C. More intense, more frequent, and longer lasting heat waves in the 21st century. Science 305, 994–997 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Alexander, L. V. et al. Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation. J. Geophys. Res. 111, D05109 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Tebaldi, C., Hayhoe, K., Arblaster, J. M. & Meehl, G. A. Going to the extremes. An intercomparison of model-simulated historical and future changes in extreme events. Clim. Change 79, 185–211 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fischer, E. & Schär, C. Consistent geographical patterns of changes in high-impact European heatwaves. Nature Geosci. 3, 398–403 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Seneviratne, S. I., Lüthi, D., Litschi, M. & Schär, C. Land–atmosphere coupling and climate change in Europe. Nature 443, 205–209 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Diffenbaugh, N. S., Pal, J. S., Giorgi, F. & Gao, X. Heat stress intensification in the Mediterranean climate change hotspot. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L11706 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Vautard, R. et al. Summertime European heat and drought waves induced by wintertime Mediterranean rainfall deficit. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L07711 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Fischer, E. M., Seneviratne, S. I., Vidale, P. L., Lüthi, D. & Schär, C. Soil moisture–atmosphere interactions during the 2003 European summer heatwave. J. Clim. 20, 5081–5099 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Jaeger, E. B. & Seneviratne, S. I. The role of land–atmosphere coupling for European temperature and precipitation extremes and trends. Clim. Dyn. published online 10.1007/s00382–010–0780–8 (2010).

  12. Haylock, M. R. et al. A European daily high-resolution gridded dataset of surface temperature and precipitation for 1950–2006. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D20119 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J. & Kleist, J. The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Timescales. (Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 1993).

  14. Klein Tank, A. M. G. & Können, G. P. Trends in indices of daily temperature and precipitation extremes in Europe, 1946–99. J. Clim. 16, 3665–3680 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Moberg, A. & Jones, P. D. Trends in indices for extremes in daily temperature and precipitation in central and western Europe, 1901–99. Int. J. Climatol. 25, 1149–1171 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Della-Marta, P. M., Haylock, M. R., Luterbacher, J. & Wanner, H. Doubled length of western European summer heat waves since 1880. J. Geophys. Res. 112, D15103 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Kuglitsch, F. G. et al. Heat wave changes in the eastern Mediterranean since 1960. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L04802 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Clark, R. T., Brown, S. J. & Murphy, J. M. Modeling northern hemisphere summer heat extreme changes and their uncertainties using a physics ensemble of climate sensitivity experiments. J. Clim. 19, 4418–4435 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Koenker, R. & Bassett, G. Jr Regression quantiles. Econometrica 46, 33–50 (1978).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Koenker, R. Quantile Regression (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  21. Cade, B. S. & Noon, B. R. A gentle introduction to quantile regression for ecologists. Front. Ecol. Environ. 1, 412–420 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Barbosa, S. M. Quantile trends in Baltic sea level. Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L22704 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Heim, R. R. A review of twentieth-century drought indices used in the United States. B. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 83, 1149–1165 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Lloyd-Hughes, B. & Saunders, M. A. A drought climatology for Europe. Int. J. Climatol. 22, 1571–1592 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Koster, R. D. et al. Regions of strong coupling between soil moisture and precipitation. Science 305, 1138–1140 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Teuling, A. J. et al. A regional perspective on trends in continental evaporation. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L02404 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Seneviratne, S. I. et al. Investigating soil moisture–climate interactions in a changing climate: A review. Earth Sci. Rev. 99, 125–161 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Koster, R. D. et al. Contribution of land surface initialization to subseasonal forecast skill: First results from a multi-model experiment. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L02402 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Baldocchi, D. et al. FLUXNET: A new tool to study the temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem-scale carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy flux densities. B. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 82, 2415–2434 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Dirmeyer, P. A. et al. GSWP-2: Multimodel analysis and implications for our perception of the land surface. B. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 87, 1381–1397 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the E-Obs dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://www.ensembles-eu.org) and the data providers in the ECA &D project (http://eca.knmi.nl). Station observations for Austria were kindly provided by the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG). Moreover, we would like to thank the ENSEMBLES community for providing model data. This study was conducted in the framework of the European Commission FP6 STREP project CECILIA (contract GOCE 037005; http://www.cecilia-eu.org/). We further acknowledge support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (NCCR Climate, NRP DROUGHT-CH), the EC FP7 Project CARBO-Extreme (FP7-ENV-2008-1-226701), and the CCES MAIOLICA project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Universitaetsstrasse 16, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

    Martin Hirschi, Sonia I. Seneviratne & Boris Orlowsky

  2. Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, Kraehbuehlstrasse 58, 8044 Zurich, Switzerland

    Martin Hirschi

  3. National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, 66 Tsarigradsko Chaussee, 1784 Sofia, Bulgaria

    Vesselin Alexandrov

  4. Danish Meteorological Institute, Lyngbyvej 100, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

    Fredrik Boberg & Ole B. Christensen

  5. National Meteorological Administration, Sos. Bucuresti-Ploiesti 97, 013686 Bucharest, Romania

    Constanta Boroneant

  6. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Gregor Mendel Strasse 33, 1180 Vienna, Austria

    Herbert Formayer

  7. Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Kroftova 43, 616 67 Brno, Czech Republic

    Petr Stepanek

Authors
  1. Martin Hirschi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sonia I. Seneviratne
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Vesselin Alexandrov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Fredrik Boberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Constanta Boroneant
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Ole B. Christensen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Herbert Formayer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Boris Orlowsky
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Petr Stepanek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.H. and S.I.S. designed the study and wrote the manuscript. M.H. carried out the analyses. B.O. helped with the statistical analyses. F.B., M.H., P.S., O.B.C. and S.I.S. developed the CECILIA climate and extreme database and the software code for the index calculation. V.A., C.B., H.F. and P.S. provided the observational indices. F.B. helped with the computation of the indices for the ENSEMBLES models.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Martin Hirschi or Sonia I. Seneviratne.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 1012 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hirschi, M., Seneviratne, S., Alexandrov, V. et al. Observational evidence for soil-moisture impact on hot extremes in southeastern Europe. Nature Geosci 4, 17–21 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1032

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1032

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing