Scandinavian pattern and temperature changes shape European summer droughts over the past millennium
(2026) Nature Communications — Vol. 17, n° 1 (2026)
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- Authors
Dalaiden, Quentin 
Seftigen, Kristina Shi, Feng
- Abstract
- Recent decades have seen pronounced changes in European hydroclimate, including widespread summer drying, yet its spatiotemporal variability and underlying drivers remain uncertain. Here we present the European Last Mil-lennial Data Assimilation (EULMDA), a new reconstruction of European hydroclimate and its main drivers covering the past millennium. EULMDA integrates five Earth System Model simulations with over one hundred moisture and temperature sensitive tree-ring records. It demonstrates high skill in reproducing instrumental variability across climate variables, including large-scale atmospheric circulation changes. We show that European warm-season drought variability is primarily governed by circulation changes associated with the Scandinavian pattern (SCAND) and long-term summer temperature changes, together explaining over half of the spatiotemporal drought variance. SCAND drives a pronounced north-south dipole in summer hydro-climate, explaining a larger fraction of Mediterranean drought variability than other major circulation modes, contributing to recent multidecadal drying in the Mediterranean alongside wetting in northern Europe. Meanwhile, summer warming intensifies drying across much of Europe. These results provide critical context for interpreting recent drought trends and insight into mechanisms shaping future hydroclimate risks. Drought is one of the most significant climate-related hazards in Eur-ope, with profound socioeconomic and environmental consequences 1-5. In recent decades, northern Europe has become wetter, while southern Europe has experienced increasing dryness, forming a distinct north-south dipole pattern 6-11. Drought can be understood as a prolonged imbalance between water supply and demand, occurring when precipitation (water supply) is insufficient to meet evaporative needs (water demand) 12. Both thermodynamic and dynamic mechanisms contribute to this imbalance 13,14. The local hydroclimate consequences of warming and the associated thermo-dynamic adjustments of the hydrological cycle are relatively well understood. The first effect is a greater atmospheric evaporative demand that induces drying. Positive feedback between a decline in soil moisture, low precipitation, and surface temperature can then be activated 2,15-18. The warming over the past century in southern Europe and the Mediterranean region could have thus contributed to
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Citations
Xue, H., Goosse, H., Dalaiden, Q., Seftigen, K., Gennaretti, F., & Shi, F. (2026). Scandinavian pattern and temperature changes shape European summer droughts over the past millennium. Nature Communications, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72385-w (Original work published 2026)