Long meteorological records are fundamental for understanding historical droughts and the management of water resources, yet digitised observations typically span less than 100 years, and much less in most regions, with considerable uncertainties surrounding earlier records. Water managers are especially interested in the ‘worst drought on record’ and ‘long-droughts’ that persist for multiple seasons, given their impacts on surface and groundwater systems. This talk will discuss how recent progress in historical data rescue for multiple meteorological variables, can be used to reconstruct and re-evaluate historical drought records, shedding light on extreme events of interest to water managers. Using examples from across Ireland and the UK, the talk will detail new insights into extreme droughts provided from attempts to leverage early meteorological observations to reconstruct historical droughts and how these insights can be useful for building resilience to drought in Dublin, a major European city highly vulnerable to droughts.
