Climate-driven interannual variability in subnational irrigation areas across Europe

Irrigation profoundly impacts ecology and agricultural productivity, with irrigated areas varying across regions and years. Interannual dynamics of irrigation extent are lacking, particularly in humid regions of Europe. We analyzed the response of irrigated areas to drought conditions in areas equipped for irrigation and used the derived relationships to estimate annual irrigated areas for 32 European countries in the period 1990-2020. Interannual variability of irrigated areas varied notably, particularly in more humid Northern and Western Europe. In most humid regions, irrigated area is larger in dry years, whereas in more arid regions like Spain, it is larger in wet years. The largest irrigated area across Europe occurred in dry years 2003 and 2018 (11.93 and 11.77 million hectares), while the smallest is estimated for the wet years 2002 and 2014 (10.71 and 10.31 million hectares). The findings of this study help to improve scenario development and water resources management. Humid and arid regions in Europe showed opposite trends in the response of irrigated area to drought conditions, according to Europe-wide surveys combined with a process-based crop-water model.