A ~700 years perspective on the 21st century drying in the eastern part of Europe based on δ18O in tree ring cellulose

• Published in: Communications earth & environment Vol. 3; no. 1; pp. 1 - 12
• Main Authors: Nagavciuc, Viorica, Ionita, Monica, Kern, Zoltán, McCarroll, Danny, Popa, Ionel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 15.11.2022; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Atmospheric circulation; Cellulose; Decision making; Drought; Drying; Heat waves; Isotopes; Oxygen; Oxygen isotopes; Paleoclimate; Summer; Tree rings; Variability; Eastern Europe; Europe
• ISSN: 2662-4435; 2662-4435
• DOI: 10.1038/s43247-022-00605-4

Numerical simulations indicate that extreme climate events (e.g., droughts, floods, heat waves) will increase in a warming world, putting enormous pressure on society and political decision-makers. To provide a long-term perspective on the variability of these extreme events, here we use a ~700 years tree-ring oxygen isotope chronology from Eastern Europe, in combination with paleo-reanalysis data, to show that the summer drying over Eastern Europe observed over the last ~150 years is to the best of our knowledge unprecedented over the last 700 years. This drying is driven by a change in the pressure patterns over Europe, characterized by a shift from zonal to a wavier flow around 1850 CE , leading to extreme summer droughts and aridification. To our knowledge, this is the first and longest reconstruction of drought variability, based on stable oxygen isotopes in the tree-ring cellulose, for Eastern Europe, helping to fill a gap in the spatial coverage of paleoclimate reconstructions.