Droughts in South East Europe (SEE): current picture, tendencies and impact

Abstract. Droughts are among the major challenges facing Europe and pose a significant threat to food security on a continental scale. The shifting of climatic zones is forcing societies to adopt measures to cope with climate extremes. However, the pace of adaptation is much slower than the rate of change observed over the past decade. The most developed economies in Europe are already progressing toward implementing strategies aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. One of the key scientific objectives is to support this adaptation by providing data-driven decision-making tools at both regional and national levels. At the same time, in some European countries, the understanding of drought remains uncertain. Even basic hazard assessments lack coherence, and methodologically sound and systematic vulnerability assessments are often entirely absent. This paper aims to uncover the drought research agenda over the past ten years for nine countries in Southeast Europe. Using a structured query in the SCOPUS database, we attempted to systematize scientific knowledge on drought exposure in the region and identify “white spots” and gaps in knowledge at both country and regional levels. Our findings show a significant increase in the number of research papers focused on various aspects of drought in these nine countries over the last decade. However, for Montenegro, Albania, Slovenia, and North Macedonia, only one or two papers were found. On the other hand, due to the complexity of drought phenomena—including the wide range of indicators, seasonality, methodologies, and aspects studied—it is extremely difficult to form a comprehensive picture for well-represented countries like Romania and Serbia. To enhance understanding of drought trends in the region over the past ten years, our review incorporates the CDI assessment. The CDI v4 dataset, provided by the Copernicus Drought Observatory, serves as the main unified tool for drought monitoring across Europe. The analysis revealed similar temporal patterns across the region, with some differences in outliers, such as historical droughts. As additional context, we included drought impact data gathered from the newly published EDID database. This supplementary information helps us understand the “inheritance” of drought impacts along major rivers and their variability.