cumulative water deficit

Background Seasonal water deficits, caused by the imbalance of water from the land surface through evapotranspiration and runoff and the gain through precipitation, are an important driver of agricultural productivity and forest growth.

Background Droughts have major impacts on fluxes between land and the atmosphere, agricultural production, and the carbon cycle. Future projections of drought magnitude and frequencies are surprisingly divergent and interpretations of trends from Earth System Model outputs have drawn conflicting pictures of drought impact trends in a heating climate.

Background There is a current scientific debate if the intensity of the recent 2003, 2015, and 2018 droughts is exceptional in the context of the last millennium. Based on tree-ring reconstructions, some authors find them to be within the range of natural variability (Ionita et al.