Quantifying impacts of the 2018 drought on European ecosystems in comparison to 2003

Buras, Allan; Rammig, Anja; Zang, Christian S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-1655-2020

Articles | Volume 17, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-1655-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-1655-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 6

Research article

|

27 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 27 Mar 2020

Quantifying impacts of the 2018 drought on European ecosystems in comparison to 2003

Allan Buras, Anja Rammig, and Christian S. Zang

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Final revised paper (published on 27 Mar 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 19 Aug 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of the manuscript Quantifying impacts of the drought 2018 on European ecosystems in comparison to 2003 by Allan Buras, Anja Rammig, Christian S. Zang', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Aug 2019
- AC3: 'Reply to Referee #1', Allan Buras, 04 Oct 2019
RC2: 'Review of "Quantifying impacts of the drought 2018 on European ecosystems in comparison to 2003"', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to Referee #2', Allan Buras, 30 Sep 2019
AC1: 'Reply to Referee #1', Allan Buras, 30 Sep 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (18 Oct 2019) by Sebastiaan Luyssaert

AR by Allan Buras on behalf of the Authors (22 Nov 2019)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (09 Dec 2019) by Sebastiaan Luyssaert

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have done a good job revising the manuscript. Below I list some (minor) comments and suggestions to further improve the manuscript and clarify a few points.

Abstract:
Abbreviations not explained (NDVI, EVI, VI). Especially VI may need clarification for readers who are not familiar with remote sensing terminology.

Introduction:
l. 53: this sentence may need rephrasing. I suggest writing “… heatwave of 2003 was long considered the most extreme compound event… “ because it doesn’t come as a big surprise that 2018 was worse (and perhaps so was 2019?)

Materials and Methods:
l. 84-86: not totally clear. Did you use April-July for 2003 and May-August for 2018? Please clarify and motivate this choice better. Why not the same period (e.g. April-August) for both years?
l. 198: I suppose this should be Fig. S6 instead of Fig. S5 (which does not show land cover types)? Please also clarify the abbreviations used in Fig. S6 (and other supplementary figures).

Results:
Fig. 1: Legend mentions April-July. Should this be August (2003) and July (2018)? Or May-August and April-July? Similar remark for Fig. 3 (while in Fig. 2, the legend has been revised).
Fig. 5: these results are of course strongly determined by the spatial differences in the heatwave of 2018 vs 2003. I would be interested to see the NDVI analysis for Central Europe only, where the heatwave was similarly extreme in both years. In other words, excluding N and S Europe, where the weather was very different for both years. This could give some extra substance to section 4.2.2.
Fig. 7: include statistics to indicate whether the difference between both years differed between the vegetation types.

Discussion:
l. 400: should this be “5 (±1) percent”?
l.407ff: it could also be mentioned in this paragraph that choice of VI can influence differences in responses between vegetation types (e.g. when some indices like NDVI detect drought better in grasslands than in forests, and vice versa for other VIs).
l.450 ff: choice of VI may also matter here (see previous remark). You find a similar response in EVI, supporting your statements. This is worth mentioning here.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (16 Jan 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (03 Feb 2020) by Sebastiaan Luyssaert

AR by Allan Buras on behalf of the Authors (11 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (18 Feb 2020) by Sebastiaan Luyssaert

AR by Allan Buras on behalf of the Authors (24 Feb 2020)

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Short summary

This study compares the climatic conditions and ecosystem response of the extreme European drought of 2018 with the previous extreme drought of 2003. Using gridded climate data and satellite-based remote sensing information, our analyses qualify 2018 as the new European record drought with wide-ranging negative impacts on European ecosystems. Given the observation of forest-legacy effects in 2019 we call for Europe-wide forest monitoring to assess forest vulnerability to climate change.