The 1921 European drought: impacts, reconstruction and drivers

van der Schrier, Gerard; Allan, Richard P.; Ossó, Albert; Sousa, Pedro M.; Van de Vyver, Hans; Van Schaeybroeck, Bert; Coscarelli, Roberto; Pasqua, Angela A.; Petrucci, Olga; Curley, Mary; Mietus, Mirosław; Filipiak, Janusz; Štěpánek, Petr; Zahradníček, Pavel; Brázdil, Rudolf; Řezníčková, Ladislava; van den Besselaar, Else J. M.; Trigo, Ricardo; Aguilar, Enric

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2201-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2201-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2201-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 5

Research article

|

21 Oct 2021

Research article |

| 21 Oct 2021

The 1921 European drought: impacts, reconstruction and drivers

Gerard van der Schrier, Richard P. Allan, Albert Ossó, Pedro M. Sousa, Hans Van de Vyver, Bert Van Schaeybroeck, Roberto Coscarelli, Angela A. Pasqua, Olga Petrucci, Mary Curley, Mirosław Mietus, Janusz Filipiak, Petr Štěpánek, Pavel Zahradníček, Rudolf Brázdil, Ladislava Řezníčková, Else J. M. van den Besselaar, Ricardo Trigo, and Enric Aguilar

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Final revised paper (published on 21 Oct 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Apr 2021)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on cp-2021-41', Olga Solomina, 23 May 2021

The paper is an important contribution to the modern and paleo- climatology. Combining the data from historical archives, early meteorological records, and modern approaches of climatological studies the authors provided a holistic view of an unusual event that occurred in 1921 in Europe – an extreme drought. They analyzed its spatial distribution with high temporal resolution in 1920-1921, considered potential drivers including the contribution of the climatic conditions of preceding autumn and winter, and the soil desiccation. Screening the European newspapers from five countries, they identified various types of impacts in agriculture, livestock farming, forest management, water quality etc. that affected different regions in 1921.

The most substantial conclusion that the authors achieved is the assessment of the scale of the 1921 drought in the frames of the past century. With high confidence, they demonstrated that this event was the most extreme over the century. Two events with similar atmospheric conditions in 1976 and 2018 were of smaller amplitude.

To support their conclusions the authors used very extensive set of meteorological data. They also introduced new meteorological records that they rescued from the local sources. These new datasets allowed constructing the network dense enough to reconstruct substantial details of the meteorological situations in 1921 over the Europe.

Another original block of a new data – the evidences of different types of consequences of the 1921 drought published in the newspapers. I appreciate the photos included in the supplementary – they show how the meteorological extremes affect the everyday life of people.

The Old World Drought Atlas (Cook et al., 2015) reproduces the drought of 1921 as a very severe one. Moreover, the European Russia Drought Atlas (Cook et al., 2020) shows that this drought was spreading up to the Volga River region area and the southern Urals.

My conclusion is that the subject of this paper is within the scope of the “Climate of the Past” and the work represents an interesting and non-trivial approach highlighting a single (but compound) event considering it from different aspects. The methods and approaches used are appropriate. The presentation quality is high. The text is comprehensive, concise, with good illustrations. I do not see any substantial gaps in the literature cited. The language is clear. I found very few places that require editorial changes (e.g. “…the length of the dry spell is varies from country to country”. “...the water level in the Rhine has been record low from spring ….”), but I am not a native speaker and cannot assess the manuscript from this side.

I believe that the paper is suitable and ready for the publication in the Climate in the Past.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-41-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Gerard van der Schrier, 12 Jul 2021
  
  reply to Reviewer 1, Dr. Olga Solomina
  Many thanks to the reviewer for going through the manuscript to assess its suitability for publication in Climate of the Past. The few remarks that are made on the language have been addressed.
  Following the review, we added a reference to the European Russian Drought Atlas to emphasize (as we do in the Introduction) that the drought was extensive and reached up the Ural mountains.
  In conclusion, we would like to stress that while the impact of the drought was strong in western and central Europe, the situation was more dramatic in eastern Europe. The data availability did not allow us to extent the reconstruction of daily precipitation and temperature further to the east. Hopefully there will be a new opportunity to reach out to other data holding archives to see if the reconstruction could be extended to the Ural mountains.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-41-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on cp-2021-41', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Jun 2021

General evaluation

I will echo referee #1 here – this is a great and timely study that I very much enjoyed reading. van der Schrier et al. presents an in-depth assessments of the 1921 European drought, by closely examining the impact of the drought on various aspects of the society (by a systematic literature review of newspapers from the time of the drought), as well as providing a qualitative evaluation of the characteristics and drivers of the 1921 drought. I find the idea of this work compelling and original, and thus I regard the results being of general and international interest. I therefore recommend the work to published in Climate of the Past after a minor revision.

The manuscript is well-written, the methods that have been used are, as far as I can see, sound and well justified. My only concern is that the paper is at present a bit lengthy. There are currently 13 figures in the manuscript, and most of them consists of several panels. This is a lot of information for a reader to digest, and I fear that the main message and findings of the work may be masked by information of secondary importance. I therefore strongly recommend the authors to check the figures and move those that do not really contribute to the story to the supplement.

I have listed a few other minor comments below, mostly highlighting parts where clarification or paraphrasing is needed. I hope that this feedback will help the authors improve their work, and I look forward to seeing the final product in Climate of the Past.

Specific comments

P1/L4: “(rescued) meteorological measurements” the term “rescued” is unclear here. Define or remove from the abstract

P1/L16: “The 1921 drought stands-out as the most severe and most wide-spread drought in Europe since the start of the 20th century. While none of the seasons in 1920 and 1921 tops the scale of having the largest precipitation deficit on record, the conservative nature of drought amplifies the lack of precipitation in autumn and winter into the following spring and summer”

the meaning of this paragraph is not fully clear. The 21 drought stands out as the most severe on record, yet there are no deficits in observed precipitation??

P3/L54: “systematic effort to review” provide more details on how this systematic literature search was conducted (e.g., keywords, publication dates, databases used, etc.).

P3/L66 please make sure that the figures in the supplement are placed in the same order as they are referred to in the main text.

P3/L71: “BE and DE report” – define the abbreviations

P7/L164: 0.4 mm – is this a common threshold? If so, provide a reference.

P7/L172: “30°Cin” spacing needed

P8/L198 complement

P8/L204: ”… amount of data that is used to construct the data” reword

P8/L216: I assume that the new met data were quality checked and homogenized before the gridding procedure? If so, this should be mentioned in the methods.

P9/L218 “[…] has been provided.” provided from where?

P9/L226 “daily temperature data” it should be mentioned here, or earlier in the methods, whether this refers to max, min or average daily temperature

P10/L261 RR1?

P10/L270: change to extraterrestrial or extra-terrestrial

P11/L294: “For comparison, […]” if a comparison is made with fig 5, then please provided the values for SPI12 and not SPI3.

P11/L297: “[…] and peak values in 1967 are […]” unclear if these statistics are for SPI3 or SPI6 or SPI12?

P11/L301: “dry to extremely dry conditions” define the SPI threshold for these conditions

P14/L402: “[…] largest precipitation deficit on record […]” unclear, which record this refers to.

L408: “the drought had its first major impacts in autumn 1920 in north Italy” fig 7 seems to show rather pluvial conditions in northern Italy at that time …

Fig 4 caption does not make sense. What is the difference between panels a,b,c and d? Which of the panels represent temperature and which represent precipitation? Also, the last digits in the labels on the colorbars seems to be truncated? This figure is in my opinion better suited in the supplement .

Fig 5: Indicate in the caption which country the Uccle series comes from (suggestion). Provide a title for the x-axis.

Fig 6 caption: x-axis – number of consecutive months?

Overall I find the labels for the colorbars in many of the figures too small to be clearly visible. Also, the figures would be easier to understand if a title would be added to the colorbars (e.g., in fig 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12)

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-41-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Gerard van der Schrier, 12 Jul 2021
  
  Reply to reviewer 2
  Many thanks for reviewing the manuscript and bringing-up the concerns regarding the length and the comments on the wording and lack of explanation.
  Specific comments (reviewer comments in italic):
  
  P1/L4: “(rescued) meteorological measurements” the term “rescued” is unclear here. Define or remove from the abstract
  
  It is removed from the abstract. The term is introduced in the manuscript further below.
  P1/L16: “The 1921 drought stands-out as the most severe and most wide-spread drought in Europe since the start of the 20th century. While none of the seasons in 1920 and 1921 tops the scale of having the largest precipitation deficit on record, the conservative nature of drought amplifies the lack of precipitation in autumn and winter into the following spring and summer” the meaning of this paragraph is not fully clear. The 21 drought stands out as the most severe on record, yet there are no deficits in observed precipitation??
  This was rephrased into: "The 1921 drought stands-out as the most severe and most wide-spread drought in Europe since the start of the 20th century. The precipitation deficit in all seasons was large, but in none of the seasons in 1920 and 1921 the precipitation deficit was the largest on record. The severity of the 1921 drought relates to the conservative nature of drought which amplifies the lack of precipitation in autumn and winter into the following spring and summer. "
  P3/L54: “systematic effort to review” provide more details on how this systematic literature search was conducted (e.g., keywords, publication dates, databases used, etc.).
  The information on the approach of the review was indeed incomplete and scattered in the manuscript. This paragraph has been rewritten into: "
  A systematic effort was made to review the impacts of the 1921 drought. This is done by collecting text-based reports from five digitized newspapers which reported drought impacts. The period for which the newspapers were reviewed was from January 1 to December 31 1921. Different selected newspapers were explored through their digital archives by means of the search term ‘drought’ (in each of the native languages). Text-based reports from the following digitized newspapers were used: the Birmingham Gazette (United Kingdom), the Algemeen Handelsblad (the Netherlands), the De Standaard (Belgium), the Berliner Tageszeitung (Germany) and the Lidov\'e noviny (the Czech Republic). These papers can be accessed through their digital archives (webaddresses are provided in the acknowledgement).
  The newspaper clippings were classified into major impact categories, each of which had a number of subtypes. The classification follows the pioneering work of Stahl et al. (2016, their Table A2) and each report is labelled by area or place and date. The distribution of these categories and types was then analyzed over time for the five newspapers and taken to be representative for the related countries.
  In addition to this systematic effort, a more ad hoc approach was taken for Ireland, northern Italy and the Alpine region, France and Poland.
  
  Newspaper-based reports on impacts and reported impacts in scientific publications from that period were used to identify impacts which were prominent in the reporting.
  P3/L66 please make sure that the figures in the supplement are placed in the same order as they are referred to in the main text.
  
  ordering of the figures is changed
  P3/L71: “BE and DE report” – define the abbreviations
  
  Abbreviations defined
  P7/L164: 0.4 mm – is this a common threshold? If so, provide a reference.
  
  The 0.4 mm was a common threshold used by the UK Met Office in that period. This remark has been added to the manuscript.
  P7/L172: “30°Cin” spacing needed
  
  corrected
  P8/L198 complement
  
  corrected
  P8/L204: ”… amount of data that is used to construct the data” reword
  
  reworded
  P8/L216: I assume that the new met data were quality checked and homogenized before the gridding procedure? If so, this should be mentioned in the methods.
  
  The data are quality controlled. They are not homogenized. Although this was done in the context of the INDECIS project for the modern period, homogenization of daily data for the 1920s was not possible. This comment has been added to the manuscript.
  P9/L218 “[…] has been provided.” provided from where?
  
  Source added.
  P9/L226 “daily temperature data” it should be mentioned here, or earlier in the methods, whether this refers to max, min or average daily temperature
  
  Comment added to make clear that with 'daily temperature data' we mean the set of daily tmax, tmin and daily averaged temperature data.
  P10/L261 RR1?
  
  Removed
  P10/L270: change to extraterrestrial or extra-terrestrial
  
  changed
  P11/L294: “For comparison, […]” if a comparison is made with fig 5, then please provided the values for SPI12 and not SPI3.
  
  Rephrased: a comparison between the SPI12 value of 1921 and more recent years was intended. Added to the ms. are numerical comaprisons betwen the SPI3 and SPI6 values of 1921 and thse of more modern droughts.
  P11/L297: “[…] and peak values in 1967 are […]” unclear if these statistics are for SPI3 or SPI6 or SPI12?
  
  Rephrased
  P11/L301: “dry to extremely dry conditions” define the SPI threshold for these conditions
  
  Threshold values added to the text
  P14/L402: “[…] largest precipitation deficit on record […]” unclear, which record this refers to.
  
  Rephrased and comments added to the text to clarify
  L408: “the drought had its first major impacts in autumn 1920 in north Italy” fig 7 seems to show rather pluvial conditions in northern Italy at that time …
  
  This was phrased awkwardly, the Alpine region saw the impacts in autumn 1920 and streams from the Alps to the north Italian plane were affected. Sentence is rephrased.
  Fig 4 caption does not make sense. What is the difference between panels a,b,c and d? Which of the panels represent temperature and which represent precipitation? Also, the last digits in the labels on the colorbars seems to be truncated? This figure is in my opinion better suited in the supplement .
  
  This figure is moved to the Appendix. One of the colour bars indeed had truncated numbers - changed. Labels have been added to the figure panels, making clear to which variable and what year each panels refers to.
  Fig 5: Indicate in the caption which country the Uccle series comes from (suggestion). Provide a title for the x-axis.
  
  In the caption it is made clear that Uccle is in Belgium. The x-axis of this figure clearly shows years - it would be superfluous to add a label.
  Fig 6 caption: x-axis – number of consecutive months?
  
  Yes - good point. Xlabel changed.
  Overall I find the labels for the colorbars in many of the figures too small to be clearly visible. Also, the figures would be easier to understand if a title would be added to the colorbars (e.g., in fig 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12)
  
  The menstioned figures are modified and now contain a title (except fig 4 - info added in the figure itself, and fig. 7 where titles would make the figure more messy). All mentioned figures now contain a title to the colourbar.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-41-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (20 Jul 2021) by Jürg Luterbacher

AR by Gerard van der Schrier on behalf of the Authors (26 Jul 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes

EF by Sarah Buchmann (27 Jul 2021) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Aug 2021) by Jürg Luterbacher

AR by Gerard van der Schrier on behalf of the Authors (08 Sep 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

The 1921 drought was the most severe drought to hit Europe since the start of the 20th century. Here the climatological description of the drought is coupled to an overview of its impacts, sourced from newspapers, and an analysis of its drivers. The area from Ireland to the Ukraine was affected but hardest hit was the triangle between Brussels, Paris and Lyon. The drought impacts lingered on until well into autumn and winter, affecting water supply and agriculture and livestock farming.