Annual area exposed to drought (top) and impacted by drought (bottom) in the EU, in 2000-2024

Methodology

Drought exposure is defined as the area experiencing strong deficit in soil moisture compared to the 2000-2020 baseline. Strong deficit is defined as anomalies that are lower than -1 standard deviation from the baseline. Drought impact is defined as the area in km² where vegetation productivity did not recover to the 2000-2020 baseline conditions due to drought. Non-recovery was defined as anomalies that are lower than -0.5 standard deviation from the baseline. The vegetation productivity is estimated using the Medium Resolution Vegetation Phenology and Productivity datasets of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. See more under the supporting information section.