the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 14 Aug 2024
The 2022 Drought Needs to be a Turning Point for European Drought Risk Management
Abstract. The 2022 European drought has underscored critical deficiencies in European water management. This paper explores these shortcomings and suggests a way forward for European drought risk management.
Data for this study was gathered through a continent-wide survey of water managers involved in this event. The survey collected 481 responses from 30 European countries and is comprised of 19 questions concerning sectorial impact in the 55 regions of the responders and drought risk management practices of their organizations. Information from the survey is enriched with climate-related information to offer a comprehensive overview of drought risk management in Europe. Our research focuses on four key aspects: the increasing risk of drought, its spatial and temporal impacts, current drought risk management approaches, and the evolution of drought risk management across the continent.
Our findings reveal a consensus on the growing risk of drought, which is confounded by the rising frequency and intensity of droughts. While the 2022 event affected most of the continent, our findings show significant regional disparities in drought risk management capacity among the various countries. Our analysis indicates that current drought risk management measures often rely on short-term operational concerns, particularly in agriculture-dominated economies, leading to potentially maladaptive practices. An overall positive trend in drought risk management, with organizations showing increased awareness and preparedness, indicates how this crisis can be the ideal moment to mainstream European-wide drought risk management. Consequently, we advocate for a European Drought Directive, to harmonize and enforce drought risk management policies across the continent. This directive should promote a systemic, integrated, and long-term risk management perspective. The directive should also set clear guidelines for drought risk management at the national level and for cross-boundary drought collaboration.
This study and its companion paper "The 2022 Drought Shows the Importance of Preparedness in European Drought Risk Management " are the result of a study carried out by the Drought in the Anthropocene (DitA) network.
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-2069', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Sep 2024
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RE: "The 2022 Drought Needs to be a Turning Point for European Drought Risk Management"
This is an interesting paper, exploring a very important topic with applied research, bringing together quantitative and qualitative research on European drought management through the study of a recent drought in Europe (2022). The paper is well written and the content, findings, discussion and recommendations are of value to both academia and practitioners.
One point I would like to pick up on is, and whilst I fully agree with the need for a stronger international drought risk management approach, you state “we advocate for a European Drought Directive, to harmonize and enforce drought risk management policies across the continent" in your abstract and elsewhere, but your results really show significant regional disparities in drought impacts and drought risk management capacity among the various countries, so it might be worth also caveating more this somehow? This idea of needing a stronger, holistic plan/approach, but also recognising the varying impacts and level of management required based on the drought severity.
Throughout the paper I only have a number of minor suggestions and comments:
Abstract:
In your data & results you also include observational data analysis of the 2022 drought, as well as the survey responses, so it might be worth mentioning this quantitative/meteorological data analysis in the abstract as your study it is not just the survey responses.
“The 2022 Drought Shows the Importance of Preparedness in European Drought Risk Management” paper referred to in the abstract – different title to that mentioned in lines 88-89.
Manuscript:
1. Introduction:
Line 78-80: "In several countries, this prolonged and widespread situation led to increased water withdrawals and eventually restrictions on water use due to persistent hot and dry conditions in May, June and July (Avanzi et al., 2024; Bonaldo et al., 2023; Toreti et al., 2022)." -> Perhaps just list a few example countries in the statement somewhere to help provide this context to the reader?
Line 94: IPCCa – should this actually be IPCC, 2022a (which is how you reference it on line 146). This needs changing, and in the reference list too (line 132 & 138 - IPCC 2022a and IPCC 2022b not IPCCa and IPCCb)
Line 163: Extra bracket with references to be removed.
p.6 Was the EC Flood Directive established in 2007 or 2008? 2008 is stated on line 191, but then 2007 later on line 206.
2: Methods and data
2.1 – great coverage of SPEI and the data used, but you haven’t clarified the spatial extent of the data used? It might just be worth adding that it for completeness.
You state in Figure 3 that you use a dataset of 1950-2022, perhaps state this somewhere in section 2.1. Currently you only name the reference period (1971-2000).
Line 224 – typo: The comma after the full stop at the start of this sentence is a typo. And the comma after the time period is not needed.
Line 289: typo: “norther-western” should be northwestern or north-western
3. Results
Line 330 – potential typo in the middle of the line as it looks like there are some extra spaces in between “weather” and “imposed”?
Line 351 – consider signposting to the specific figure you are referencing to here, so: (dark brown colour, Fig. 3e & 3g).
Figure 4 – which accumulation period of SPEI is being used here (as you have shown both 3 and 6 in previous figures)?
Figure 4 - would it be possible to plot the months in the reverse order?
It feels like section 3.1.2 is not quite in the right place, or instead it actually needs to be merged more with the last part of the section above, to allow for the results of droughts 1950-2000, ranking (Fig. 3) & SPEI drought severity (Fig, 4) to be complemented with this perception of drought risk from the survey. I therefore recommend creating this subsection earlier – and having something like “Observed and perceived change in drought” as a subsection before line 360, and then allowing the current analysis of SPEI in Figure 4 to then move straight into the current text on survey results of perceived drought risk in 3.1.2. I hope this makes sense.
Figure 5: No definition of white (no impacts?) seen in NE and one or two other places.
Line 423, is it worth mentioning Figures 2 and 3 again here at the end of this section/sentence, just to link back to the observed SPEI patterns seen in Northern Europe?
Figure 6: Colour scheme on first glance makes it seem that anything with a impact severity of 3 is not as severe because it is a light, neutral colour, and instead 1 looks stronger. Is there another combination of colours that could be used here to represent the impact severity better?
Line 442 – is 2% a typo, seems very low, and from reading Fig. 7, I think you meant 27%.
Line 459 – 466: When discussing EC Blueprint (Figure 7b) %’s are low, totalling only 33% - 33% of all respondents? Any suggestions on why so low on this question/data collection?
Figure 7 – a) and b) are not defined in the figure caption.
Figure 8 figure caption feels too long. Can this be reduced down?
Figure 9 – again the caption feels slightly too long, and not in the same style as previous captions. I recommend removing line 546-548: “The respondents could answer “more”, “same”, or “less” to the three questions “How aware/prepared/effective was your organization in 2022 compared to 2018?”. The option “I don’t know” and the possibility to leave the question blank (i.e. “#N/A”) were also available.”
Section 3.4.1 Catalonia. Don’t forget that you can link the starting information with your figures earlier on SPEI-3 and 6.
Section 3.4 Regional Spotlights. These are two interesting and important case studies, however the Catalonia case study does not feel like it is really linked to the data and data analysis as much as they could be – section 3.4.2 Italy does this well. For 3.4.1 can more of the responses from this region be explored regarding water management and measures, and is there are qualitative data from these regional case studies from participants responses on open questions that can be included for a stronger link and deeper use of survey data, similar to what you have done for section 3.4.2?
4. Discussion:
Page 26 – participant quote included in a box, but for consistency would it be better integrated into the text of section 4.1.3? Although I do think that it helps highlight the qualitative data through this approach. Also, instead of stating Question 12, I recommend reframing the question in the answer using brackets to help give the context, such as: “The main issue [of the measures taken by the organisation] was high demand rather than supply shortfall - the distribution network encountered issues due to the high demand in May-July and eased off in August. All sources were utilising their peak output for 2-3months whilst planned outages were postponed.”
5. Recommendations for European drought risk governance:
Section 5.2 – in-text referencing needs to be consistent with the rest of the paper (lines 788-789).
6. Conclusion
Perhaps try to summarize one or two more key points about the 2022 European drought in the first part of your conclusion.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2069-RC1
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