Abstract
Climate change will likely lead to more regular and more severe drought
events in the near future, with large impacts on agriculture, especially
during long-lasting precipitation deficits or heat waves. This study
focuses on agricultural droughts, which are generally defined as soil
moisture deficits so severe, that vegetation is negatively impacted.
However, during short soil moisture drought events, vegetation is not
always negatively affected, and sometimes even thrives under increased
solar input. Because of this duality in agricultural drought impacts,
the use of the term agricultural droughts is a potential issue.
Here we show that, in major European droughts over the past two decades,
clear asynchronies did occur between soil moisture and vegetation
anomalies. A wrong use of the term agricultural droughts could lead to
misclassification of drought events and false drought alarms, and for
that reason, a distinction is necessary between soil moisture and
vegetation droughts.