IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN CROATIA BASED ON NEWSPAPER REPORTS IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN 1981 AND 2019

The paper analyses drought impact data on individual economic sectors in Croatia according to years and seasons. The analysis was mostly conducted for two major regions - the Continental and Adriatic Croatia. Data were collected within the Interreg project Drought Risk in the Danube region (DriDanube) from newspaper articles and professional journals for theperiod between 1981and 2019. The analysis was conducted separately for two periods, 1981 -1999 and 2000 -2019, since the data sources in those two periods differ. Due to digitalisation, a far larger number of reports was collected in the latter period. The results indicated that the majority of reports related to damage in agriculture and water management, whereas information about drought impacts on forests, soil and wildfires was more rarely represented in newspaper reports. The most numerous reports about agriculture related to monetary losses due to drought damage, declared state of natural disaster and market price increase, while reports about water management related to problems with local water supply, dried-up wells and needs to bring water tanks to smaller villages and islands. Although drought can occur in other seasons as well, the greatest damage is caused by drought occurring in the warm part of the year, particularly in summer, when the absence of precipitation is combined with high air temperatures. Reports on individual (extremely) dry years match data on economic losses in Croatia as well as the meteorological drought index for monitoring. This paper shows the importance of collected reports and preparation of a database on drought impacts to contribute to a wider drought knowledge spectrum.