Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2023-35
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2023-35
08 Jun 2023
 | 08 Jun 2023
Status: this preprint is currently under review for the journal CP.

A past and present perspective on the European summer vapour pressure deficit

Viorica Nagavciuc, Simon L. L. Michel, Daniel F. Balting, Gerhard Helle, Mandy Freund, Gerhard H. Schleser, David N. Steger, Gerrit Lohmann, and Monica Ionita

Abstract. The response of evapotranspiration to anthropogenic warming is of critical importance for the water and carbon cycle. Contradictory conclusions about evapotranspiration changes are caused primarily by their brevity in time and sparsity in space, as well as the strong influence of internal variability. Here, we present the first gridded reconstruction of the summer vapour pressure deficit (VPD) for the past four centuries at the European level. This gridded reconstruction is based on 26 European tree-ring oxygen isotope records and is obtained using a Random Forest approach. Based on our reconstruction, we show that from the mid- 1700s, a trend towards higher VPD occurred in Central Europe and the Mediterranean region which is related to a simultaneous increase in temperature and decrease in precipitation. This increasing VPD trend continues throughout the observational period and in recent times. Moreover, our VPD reconstruction helps to visualize the local and regional impacts of the current climate change as well as to minimize statistical uncertainties of historical VPD variability. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary use of the data should be emphasized, as VPD is a crucial parameter for many climatological feedback processes in the earth surface system. The reconstructed VPD gridded data, over the last 400 years, is available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5958836 (Balting, D. F. et al., 2022).

Viorica Nagavciuc et al.

Status: final response (author comments only)

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on cp-2023-35', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Jun 2023
  • RC2: 'Comment on cp-2023-35', Marzena Kłusek, 09 Jul 2023
  • RC3: 'Comment on cp-2023-35', Anonymous Referee #3, 27 Jul 2023

Viorica Nagavciuc et al.

Data sets

A past and present perspective on the European summer vapour pressure deficit Daniel F. Balting, Simon L. L. Michel, Viorica Nagavciuc, Gerhard Helle, Mandy Freund, Gerhard H. Schleser, David N. Steger, Gerrit Lohmann, and Monica Ionita https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5958836

Viorica Nagavciuc et al.

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Short summary
The main aim of this paper is to present the summer VPD reconstruction dataset for the last 400 years over Europe based on 26 European tree-ring oxygen isotope records by using a Random Forest approach. We provide both a spatial as well as a temporal long-term perspective on the past summer VPD. This is the first gridded reconstruction of the European summer VPD over the past 400 years, a dataset which was produced to cover a large knowledge gap about past European VPD variability.