The impact of climate change in the near future means that extreme droughts that Europe, North America and China experienced this summer will become a common occurrence and that the Northern Hemisphere should brace for such extremities every 20 years, according to an international research group.
This will happen irrespective of whether the earth continues to heat up, according to World Weather Attribution (WWA), a group of climate scientists from the United States, Britain, France, India and the Netherlands.
Water shortages, fires, high food prices and severe crop losses were noted by the group as being among the impacts of one of the hottest European summers on record.
These conditions led to very dry soils, particularly in France, Germany and other central European countries. Mainland China has also experienced exceptionally high temperatures and dryness.
"These deficits in soil moisture led to poor harvests in the affected regions, increased fire risk, and, in combination with already very high food prices, are expected to threaten food security across the world," the WWA said.
The research showed that droughts have become three to four times more likely in Western and Central Europe following around 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of anthropogenic global warming. Without global warming, the kind of drought seen in Europe this year would occur only once every 60 to 80 years.
The figures for the Northern Hemisphere were more alarming. While droughts could now be expected every 20 years – as for Europe – without anthropogenic warming they would have occurred only once every 400 years. The team warned however that the two could not be compared directly.
The researchers focused on soil moisture in June, July and August this year, monitoring the first meter of the surface. When this is dry, experts refer to agricultural and ecological drought.
"Droughts in Europe led to lower harvests," climate researcher Friederike Otto of Imperial College in London said.
"This was particularly worrying as the droughts followed heatwaves caused by climate change in South Asia that destroyed grain harvests - and this at a time when food prices were already extremely high as a result of the war in Ukraine."
The WWA said this year's European summer was one of the hottest on record with more than 24,000 deaths attributed to heat.
It noted that assessing global warming's contribution to individual drought events was problematic, despite the progress in research. Measuring soil desiccation was also more problematic than temperatures and precipitation.
For that reason, the study's results were expressed conservatively, implying that the actual impact of anthropogenic climate change is even greater.
"We have to stop burning fossil fuels if we are to stabilize the climate and prevent further exacerbation of drought events," Sonia Seneviratne of the Institute of Technology in Zurich said.
