Climate Change Impact on Meteorological Drought and Soil Water Storage in the Nitra River Basin for the Period 2015–2019

Drought impacts are significant and widespread on a year-to-year basis, affecting many economic sectors and people at any time. Definitions of drought are clustered into four types: meteorological, hydrologic, agricultural, and socio-economic. In our paper we focus on the comparison of meteorological drought (defined as a period with no precipitation) and agricultural drought (determined as the value below the amount of water storage in the soil profile accessible to plants). The meteorological stations of the Department of Biometeorology and Hydrology of the Slovak University of Agriculture (SUA) in the Nitra River Basin (Slovakia) – Bystričany, Solčany and Palárikovo – were used for the research. Soil moisture was recorded at horizons 0–0.15 m and 0.15–0.30 m. The occurrence of meteorological as well as agricultural drought in the Bystričany locality has changed quite significantly – not only in the summer months but also in the autumn and often in the spring. Meteorological drought in the Solčany locality occurs regularly almost throughout the whole year. Agricultural drought is becoming more regular in the last monitored years. In Palárikovo (the southernmost locality) the occurrence of meteorological drought is regular and even occurs in the spring and autumn months. Agricultural drought also occurs regularly. To increase agricultural production, it is necessary to focus not only on meteorological drought, but also on agricultural drought and soil characteristics in individual localities. We analysed the drought to the depth of 0.30 m, but in the deeper layers there may be enough moisture for the crops´ root systems.