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Anthropogenic shift towards higher risk of flash drought over China

Anthropogenic shift towards higher risk of flash drought over China
Anthropogenic shift towards higher risk of flash drought over China

Flash droughts refer to a type of droughts that have rapid intensification without sufficient early warning. To date, how will the flash drought risk change in a warming future climate remains unknown due to a diversity of flash drought definition, unclear role of anthropogenic fingerprints, and uncertain socioeconomic development. Here we propose a new method for explicitly characterizing flash drought events, and find that the exposure risk over China will increase by about 23% ± 11% during the middle of this century under a socioeconomic scenario with medium challenge. Optimal fingerprinting shows that anthropogenic climate change induced by the increased greenhouse gas concentrations accounts for 77% ± 26% of the upward trend of flash drought frequency, and population increase is also an important factor for enhancing the exposure risk of flash drought over southernmost humid regions. Our results suggest that the traditional drought-prone regions would expand given the human-induced intensification of flash drought risk.

2041-1723
Yuan, Xing
cd29f8ca-815f-4694-9ea9-4489be804294
Wang, Linying
e4b579a0-527e-4857-b0f3-e01287191139
Wu, Peili
4bba4290-108f-4067-a0cd-4af76830e523
Ji, Peng
36f0cea7-6a06-41e0-83eb-42abf0d9fabd
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Zhang, Miao
758c9654-752e-477a-a5b2-45f7873aa3e5
Yuan, Xing
cd29f8ca-815f-4694-9ea9-4489be804294
Wang, Linying
e4b579a0-527e-4857-b0f3-e01287191139
Wu, Peili
4bba4290-108f-4067-a0cd-4af76830e523
Ji, Peng
36f0cea7-6a06-41e0-83eb-42abf0d9fabd
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Zhang, Miao
758c9654-752e-477a-a5b2-45f7873aa3e5

Yuan, Xing, Wang, Linying, Wu, Peili, Ji, Peng, Sheffield, Justin and Zhang, Miao (2019) Anthropogenic shift towards higher risk of flash drought over China. Nature Communications, 10 (1), [4661]. (doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12692-7).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Flash droughts refer to a type of droughts that have rapid intensification without sufficient early warning. To date, how will the flash drought risk change in a warming future climate remains unknown due to a diversity of flash drought definition, unclear role of anthropogenic fingerprints, and uncertain socioeconomic development. Here we propose a new method for explicitly characterizing flash drought events, and find that the exposure risk over China will increase by about 23% ± 11% during the middle of this century under a socioeconomic scenario with medium challenge. Optimal fingerprinting shows that anthropogenic climate change induced by the increased greenhouse gas concentrations accounts for 77% ± 26% of the upward trend of flash drought frequency, and population increase is also an important factor for enhancing the exposure risk of flash drought over southernmost humid regions. Our results suggest that the traditional drought-prone regions would expand given the human-induced intensification of flash drought risk.

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s41467-019-12692-7 - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 19 September 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 October 2019
Published date: 1 December 2019

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 435411
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/435411
ISSN: 2041-1723
PURE UUID: fb1baeda-5645-41a0-bffc-af291e7bb7b5
ORCID for Justin Sheffield: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2400-0630

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 06 Nov 2019 17:30
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:54

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Contributors

Author: Xing Yuan
Author: Linying Wang
Author: Peili Wu
Author: Peng Ji
Author: Miao Zhang

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