The 2018–2020 Multi‐Year Drought Sets a New Benchmark in Europe

During the period 2018–2020, Europe experienced a series of hot and dry weather conditions with significant socioeconomic environmental consequences. Yet, extremity these multi-year is not recognized. Here, we provide comprehensive spatio-temporal assessment drought hazard over by benchmarking past exceptional events during from 1766 to 2020. We identified 2018–2020 event as new benchmark having an unprecedented intensity that persisted for more than 2 years, exhibiting mean areal coverage 35.6% average duration 12.2 months. What makes this truly compared its near-surface air temperature anomaly reaching +2.8 K, which constitutes further evidence ongoing global warming exacerbating present events. Furthermore, future based on climate model simulations Coupled Model Intercomparison Project v5 suggest should be prepared comparable but durations longer any those in last 250 years. Our study thus emphasizes urgent need adaption mitigation strategies cope such across Europe.