Regional Impact of Climate Change on the Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Droughts in France
Abstract
Droughts in France have significant socioeconomic impacts across multiple sectors, including agriculture, energy production, and forest fires. As climate change is already modifying drought characteristics across Europe, a regionalized analysis of plausible future drought patterns in France is helpful to prepare adaptation strategies at the scale of each river basin. To provide stakeholders with concrete assessments of future risks, we develop a comprehensive analytical framework examining soil moisture and hydrological droughts through standardized indices (SSWI and SRI). Our analysis relies on 12 high-resolution hydro-climatic simulations over metropolitan France from the Explore2 project, using ORCHIDEE as the land surface model. By treating droughts as spatially and temporally continuous events, we examine the evolution of their key properties (intensity, duration, and spatial extent) relative to the 1976-2005 reference period across each of France's six major catchments. We adopt a warming level approach aligned with the French reference warming trajectory for climate change adaptation (TRACC), analyzing drought characteristics at regional warming levels of +2°C and +4°C over metropolitan France. The results confirm a north-south divergence in drought evolution. In the northern basins (Artois-Picardie, Seine-Normandie, Rhin-Meuse), droughts tend towards historically moderate characteristics, while southern basins (Loire-Bretagne, Adour-Garonne, Rhône-Méditerranée) experience intensification of all drought characteristics, even at +2°C. Despite this dichotomy, all basins will face historically unprecedented extremes. The most extreme soil moisture drought durations increase by a factor of 2 to 3, reaching up to 41 months at +4°C warming, while hydrological drought durations increase by a factor of 1.5 to 2, reaching up to 18 months. This important increase in duration of the most extreme drought events, particularly in southern catchments, suggests a shift from episodic events to prolonged water deficit conditions. These transformations indicate that future drought risk management must account for both geographically differentiated evolution and the emergence of extreme events with no historical precedent across all French river basins.
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BibTeX
@misc{belin2026regional,
title = {{Regional Impact of Climate Change on the Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Droughts in France}},
author = {Matthieu Belin and Aglaé Jézéquel and Agnès Ducharne},
howpublished = {HAL},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05767029v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Regional Impact of Climate Change on the Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Droughts in France
AU - Matthieu Belin
AU - Aglaé Jézéquel
AU - Agnès Ducharne
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - HAL
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05767029v1
AB - Droughts in France have significant socioeconomic impacts across multiple sectors, including agriculture, energy production, and forest fires. As climate change is already modifying drought characteristics across Europe, a regionalized analysis of plausible future drought patterns in France is helpful to prepare adaptation strategies at the scale of each river basin. To provide stakeholders with concrete assessments of future risks, we develop a comprehensive analytical framework examining soil moisture and hydrological droughts through standardized indices (SSWI and SRI). Our analysis relies on 12 high-resolution hydro-climatic simulations over metropolitan France from the Explore2 project, using ORCHIDEE as the land surface model. By treating droughts as spatially and temporally continuous events, we examine the evolution of their key properties (intensity, duration, and spatial extent) relative to the 1976-2005 reference period across each of France's six major catchments. We adopt a warming level approach aligned with the French reference warming trajectory for climate change adaptation (TRACC), analyzing drought characteristics at regional warming levels of +2°C and +4°C over metropolitan France. The results confirm a north-south divergence in drought evolution. In the northern basins (Artois-Picardie, Seine-Normandie, Rhin-Meuse), droughts tend towards historically moderate characteristics, while southern basins (Loire-Bretagne, Adour-Garonne, Rhône-Méditerranée) experience intensification of all drought characteristics, even at +2°C. Despite this dichotomy, all basins will face historically unprecedented extremes. The most extreme soil moisture drought durations increase by a factor of 2 to 3, reaching up to 41 months at +4°C warming, while hydrological drought durations increase by a factor of 1.5 to 2, reaching up to 18 months. This important increase in duration of the most extreme drought events, particularly in southern catchments, suggests a shift from episodic events to prolonged water deficit conditions. These transformations indicate that future drought risk management must account for both geographically differentiated evolution and the emergence of extreme events with no historical precedent across all French river basins.
ER -