| ABSTRACT | Central Europe is likely to experience a diverse range of impacts in response to climate change, with temperature increases and the variability of extreme events. Several authors have shown that precipitation deficit in combination with high evapotranspiration typically leads to a drought. The aim of this work is to analyze variations in the moisture transport from Mediterranean Sea (MDS) during the meteorological drought episodes occurred over the Central Europe (CEU) in the period 1980-2015. To identify the episodes occurred over CEU we calculated the Standardised Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) at 1-month time scale using monthly CRU (TS3.24.01) precipitation and potential evapotranspiration data set. The episodes were organized in two groups according to the month in which the respective onset was verified: summer (APR – SEP) and winter (Oct – Mar). From the 51 episodes identified for all the period, 22 episodes had their onset during the Summer, and 29 events in the Winter. A Lagrangian forward in time analysis was made to explore the major changes in the anomalous contribution from MDS to CEU during these episodes. Results revealed that for almost all drought episodes, negative anomalies of MDS prevailed. We applied T student test to the regression coefficient at 95% to see linear relationship and significance between MDS anomaly and severity, duration, intensity and peak value of the drought episodes. According to the regression analysis, there are significant linear relationship between severity, duration, peak value (winter season) and MDS anomaly. Nevertheless, we have not found a linear relationship between the intensity and peak value (summer season) of the drought episodes with the anomalies in the moisture contribution from MDS. |