Hydrological drought types in cold climates : Quantitatives analysis of causing factors and qualitatives survey of impacts’

International audienceFor drought management and prediction, knowl- edge of causing factors and socio-economic impacts of hy- drological droughts is crucial. Propagation of meteorologi- cal conditions in the hydrological cycle results in different hydrological drought types that require separate analysis. In addition to the existing hydrological drought typology, we here define two new drought types related to snow and ice. A snowmelt drought is a deficiency in the snowmelt discharge peak in spring in snow-influenced basins and a glacier- melt drought is a deficiency in the glaciermelt discharge peak in summer in glacierised basins. In 21 catchments in Austria and Norway we studied the meteorological condi- tions in the seasons preceding and at the time of snowmelt and glaciermelt drought events. Snowmelt droughts in Nor- way were mainly controlled by below-average winter pre- cipitation, while in Austria both temperature and precipita- tion played a role. For glaciermelt droughts, the effect of below-average summer air temperature was dominant, both in Austria and Norway. Subsequently, we investigated the impacts of temperature-related drought types (i.e. snowmelt and glaciermelt drought, but also cold and warm snow sea- son drought and rain-to-snow-season drought). In histori- cal archives and drought databases for the US and Europe many impacts were found that can be attributed to these temperature-related hydrological drought types, mainly in the agriculture and electricity production (hydropower) sec-tors. However, drawing conclusions on the frequency of oc- currence of different drought types from reported impacts is difficult, mainly because of reporting biases and the in- evitably limited spatial and temporal scales of the informa- tion. Finally, this study shows that complete integration of quantitative analysis of causing factors and qualitative analy- sis of impacts of temperature-related droughts is not yet pos- sible. Analysis of selected events, however, points out that it can be a promising research area if more data on drought impacts become available