Enhanced risk of concurrent regional droughts with increased ENSO variability and warming

Jitendra Singh (), Moetasim Ashfaq, Christopher B. Skinner, Weston B. Anderson, Vimal Mishra and Deepti Singh
Additional contact information
Jitendra Singh: Washington State University
Moetasim Ashfaq: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Christopher B. Skinner: University of Massachusetts Lowell
Weston B. Anderson: Columbia University
Vimal Mishra: Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar
Deepti Singh: Washington State University

Nature Climate Change, 2022, vol. 12, issue 2, 163-170

Abstract: Abstract Spatially compounding extremes pose substantial threats to globally interconnected socio-economic systems. Here we use multiple large ensemble simulations of the high-emissions scenario to show increased risk of compound droughts during the boreal summer over ten global regions. Relative to the late twentieth century, the probability of compound droughts increases by ~40% and ~60% by the middle and late twenty-first century, respectively, with a disproportionate increase in risk across North America and the Amazon. These changes contribute to an approximately ninefold increase in agricultural area and population exposure to severe compound droughts with continued fossil-fuel dependence. ENSO is the predominant large-scale driver of compound droughts with 68% of historical events occurring during El Niño or La Niña conditions. With ENSO teleconnections remaining largely stationary in the future, a ~22% increase in frequency of ENSO events combined with projected warming drives the elevated risk of compound droughts.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01276-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:12:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1038_s41558-021-01276-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01276-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().