Anthropogenic shift towards higher risk of flash drought over China

Xing Yuan (), Linying Wang, Peili Wu, Peng Ji, Justin Sheffield and Miao Zhang
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Xing Yuan: Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
Linying Wang: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Peili Wu: Met Office Hadley Centre
Peng Ji: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Justin Sheffield: University of Southampton
Miao Zhang: Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12692-7

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