Recent changes in drought conditions over Greece

Different regions of the world are expected to experience an increase in the frequency, duration and intensity of drought phenomena as a result of the ongoing climate change. Enhanced evaporation and water deficiency over large time periods under warmer conditions will have devastating consequences in the natural ecosystems, food production as well as in the global economy. In order to monitor the evolution of climate conditions that may lead to increasing drought phenomena at local, regional or global level, a series of indicators and statistical methods have been developed. In our work, the values of various drought indices from observational data in Greece were studied over the period 1990-2020. By applying the Sen and Mann-Kendall methods, the trends and statistical significance were examined. The results showed that serious drought events take place during summer especially in the southern regions. However, the number of consecutive dry days tends to decrease.