A revised agricultural drought index in Lithuania

The objective of this study was to develop the best methodology for determining agricultural droughts in Lithuania. The currently used assessment methods do not always accurately reflect drought conditions in the country, especially in the first half of the growing season. For this purpose, the relevance of the currently used Hydrothermal Coefficient (HTC) and five drought indices widely used in other countries were reassessed. It was found that the methodologies applied in Lithuania and other countries are not completely suitable under current conditions. A new agricultural drought identification methodology using the Temperature–Precipitation Index (TPI) is proposed as a result of this study. Analysis of long-term changes (1961–2019) in reoccurrence of droughts was carried out. It was determined that the largest number of droughts in Lithuania was recorded in the last decade of the 20th century and in the first decade of the 21st century. Despite the fact that there is a positive tendency in reoccurrence of droughts, the changes are not statistically significant

Observed changes in heavy daily precipitation over the Nordic-Baltic region

The Nordic-Baltic region has experienced numerous flooding episodes resulting from heavy rainfall. Such events are costly and may potentially threaten the safety of the population. In this paper we present a temporally long and spatially dense dataset of annual maximum daily precipitation and their date of occurrence measured in a large region covering Fennoscandia and the Baltics (Dyrrdal et al., 2021, doi:10.11582/2021.00015). We analyse the long-term (1901–2020) changes at 138 stations and short-term (1969–2020) changes at 724 stations for both annual maxima and their date of occurrence. Further, we assess the climatology of heavy precipitation including record evens, as well as changes in design values. Results show a majority of positive trends in daily annual maxima and the 5-year return level, with hotspots in southeast of Norway, southern Sweden and southwest of Finland. Generally, annual maximum precipitation events occur somewhat later in the year now compared to the beginning of the last century. The 5-year return level is relatively homogeneous across the Nordic-Baltic region, with values between 30 and 50 mm, except for a few lower values in Finland and high values mainly exceeding 70 mm at the west coast of Norway