Shifting weather patterns drive 55% of Europe's summer drought trend, study finds
In a new study, researchers at Leipzig University have identified a major cause of the unusually severe summer soil drying and rising temperatures across Europe. They found that much of the trend can be attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns—that is, shifts in the weather regimes that typically occur over Europe. These changes account for around 55% of the observed summer drought trend. Specifically, more frequent and persistent high-pressure systems have brought drier conditions and reduced rainfall.
"Because atmospheric circulation plays such a large role in this drying trend, projections of future summer drought in Europe remain highly uncertain," says the study's lead author, Dr. István Dunkl of Leipzig University's Institute for Meteorology.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The Climate Attribution working group at Leipzig University investigates the extent to which climate change has influenced specific climate events. "We focused on Europe in this study because it is one of the regions experiencing the strongest observed warming trends. Among other changes, the frequency and intensity of summer heat and drought have increased markedly over recent decades," says Junior Professor Sebastian Sippel of the Institute for Meteorology, who also contributed to the study. He adds that the resulting increase in soil dryness has significant consequences for crop yields, water availability and energy production.
"We also found that the impact of climate change on European soil moisture varies from year to year. In summers with little rainfall, climate change has a particularly strong drying effect on soils," explains Dunkl. This is because, although overall rainfall is decreasing, extreme precipitation events are becoming more intense.
As a result, soil drying is partly offset in wetter years, when a larger share of the total rainfall comes from extreme events. According to Dunkl, whether drought continues to intensify in the future or temporarily eases will depend on whether the observed changes in atmospheric circulation are driven by climate change or by natural climate variability. At present, this question remains largely unresolved.
Causes of rising temperatures and drought not yet fully understood
According to the researchers, the reasons behind the exceptionally strong increase in summer temperatures and drought are not yet fully understood. On the one hand, they are a direct consequence of climate change: higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide have altered Earth's energy balance, and the resulting rise in temperatures has led to increased soil drying.
On the other hand, wet and dry summers are shaped by variability in atmospheric circulation—the large-scale interplay of high- and low-pressure systems. Over recent decades, these circulation patterns have changed across Europe: summer high-pressure systems have become more frequent and persistent, while rain-bearing low-pressure systems have become less common.
"Our study shows that these changes in atmospheric circulation make a substantial contribution to summer drought. The resulting scientific challenge is that they introduce a high degree of uncertainty into projections of future drought in Europe. While the mechanisms behind the direct effects of global warming are well understood, there is still considerable uncertainty about what is driving these changes in atmospheric circulation," explains Dunkl.
The researchers addressed this question by quantifying the relative contributions of the direct effects of climate change and changes in atmospheric circulation to drought trends in Europe and by analyzing how these two factors affect the continent's water balance.
Until now, observation-based studies have shown only that drought and changes in weather patterns occur together, without demonstrating a causal contribution from atmospheric circulation. At the same time, climate models have been unable to reproduce the observed changes in atmospheric circulation over Europe. The Leipzig researchers have now closed this gap by incorporating the observed changes in atmospheric circulation into a climate model, enabling them for the first time to quantify the causal link between changes in atmospheric circulation and drought trends.
New studies to examine the link between climate change and wildfire risk
According to Dunkl, these findings will help better constrain future drought risk. Drought causes average annual losses of around €9 billion across Europe, with substantially higher damages across the Mediterranean region. The study shows that both dynamic and thermodynamic processes must be considered together to explain past trends and assess future risk. It provides a framework for evaluating climate projections, estimating their uncertainty and developing robust adaptation strategies for an increasingly dry Europe.
Another important aspect of heat wave and drought trends has received comparatively little attention: the influence of different dimensions of biodiversity on heat and drought, and their potential role in buffering the impacts of climate change. The Leipzig researchers plan to investigate these questions as part of a proposed major collaborative research project.
Leipzig University's meteorologists are currently working on three studies examining the relationship between climate change and wildfire risk, including analyses of the wildfires that occurred in Spain and Portugal during the summer of 2025.
Publication details
István Dunkl et al, European summer drying largely driven by atmospheric circulation changes since the 1980s, Nature Geoscience (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-026-02050-w
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