What is it about?
We perform a comprehensive characterization of the exceptional drought that affected Madeira Archipelago (Portugal) during the 2011–2012 hydrological year. We assess major impacts and the main atmospheric circulation mechanisms behind the drought event. A major novelty of this work is the finding that an increment in temperature in a region where the precipitation is not a limiting factor does not mean an increase in water demand that leads to stronger and more frequent drought events as in other regions of the world. In this context the exceptionality of the extreme drought event of 2012 becomes evident.
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Why is it important?
We show that 2011-2012 was the driest winter in 150 years in Madeira. We use the long-term precipitation data available since 1865 for the station of Funchal and confirmed the exceptional dryness of this episode, particularly during the winter season (December to March). Our findings show that: i) the extreme dryness of the Island favoured an unusually intense summer fire season of 2012 (between June and September) in Madeira; ii) the main fire hotspots of the 2012 fire season are mostly coincident with the areas affected by drought. We also give evidence of an extensive, persistent high pressure anomaly over the North Atlantic during the extended winter months (October to April), centred between the Azores Islands and the UK, which favours the enhancement of north-easterly trade winds over the region.
Perspectives
This article was an opportunity to gather several diverse datasets and methodologies on a single research. By means of the SPI the 2012 drought has been classified as extreme at several timescales. The comparison with SPEI shows that unlike other regions in southern Europe the increment in drought frequency under recent climate change does not appear to be relevant in Madeira. From an operational point of view, the developed methodology allows to assess vegetation activity using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index anomalies, and thus to monitor vegetation stress and droughts in Madeira. I hope this research may contribute to help decision makers, namely those associated with forest management, tourism and environment sectors in Atlantic islands to implement measures to mitigate the strong impacts of drought events.
Margarida L. R. Liberato
Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Exceptionally extreme drought in Madeira Archipelago in 2012: Vegetation impacts and driving conditions, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, January 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2016.08.010.
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