Past and Future Global Drought Assessment

Mohammad Amin Asadi Zarch ()
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Mohammad Amin Asadi Zarch: Yazd University

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2022, vol. 36, issue 13, No 21, 5259-5276

Abstract: Abstract Understanding the climate change impacts on drought occurrence is of great importance for comprehensive water resources management. Reconnaissance drought index (RDI) considers, in addition to precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), which is a vital parameter to detect droughts under climate change. RDI is first applied to global land precipitation and PET data during 1959–2018. The annual drought trend analysis reveals while around 79% of the world’s lands present no significant drought trend, approximately 13 and 8% are getting drier and wetter, respectively. Therefore, the area of drying zone is larger than that of wetting zone. Seasonal drought trend analysis presents contradictory tendencies. Spring (MAM) and summer (JJA) indicate a drying trend. Conversely, fall (SON) and winter (DJF) present a wetting tendency. Climate projections of 16 global climate models (GCMs) from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) under RCP8.5 scenario are used to assess future drought during 2006–2055. PET is estimated using Penman–Monteith model. The results obtained from all the applied GCMs suggest that the areal extent of RDI downward trend (shifting to more arid) is larger than that of more wetness tendency. Average of the area percentages presented by the 16 GCMs indicates while the area of drying zone is almost the same with that of the past period with 13%, the wetting zone in the future with 5% is smaller than that of past with 8%. Therefore, the observed drying trend in the past period will continue during the future period.

Keywords: Drought; CRU TS 4.03 database; PET; Reconnaissance drought index; Mann–Kendall test; Climate change; GCMs; CMIP5; RCP8.5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-022-03304-z

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