Multi-year convection-permitting irrigation impacts across the European continent

Abstract. Irrigation representation in weather and climate modeling is advancing and becoming more relevant. Global, regional and local studies that included irrigation in Earth system models already demostrated the effects of irrigation in different variables. Some regional and local simulations have studied the irrigation impact in some parts of Europe with simulations limited to the duration of one growing season. Therefore, long-term irrigation simulations that cover the whole European continent are still missing. This study quantifies the long-term impact of irrigation on surface and atmospheric variables over the EURO-CORDEX domain using convection-permitting ICON simulations that cover a period of 12 years. Our findings indicate that the magnitude of the irrigation impact is limited by the irrigated region and the year of study in the EURO-CORDEX domain, showing that the land-atmosphere coupling is key to determine the irrigation effects. For instance, the cold and wet summer of 2017 in south Europe weaked the irrigation cooling in the Alps. In contrast, the heat wave of 2018 in Central Europe enabled the influence of irrigation on surface variables in this region.