Getting ahead of Flash Drought: From Early Warning to Early Action

Otkin, Jason A.; Woloszyn, Molly; Wang, Hailan; Svoboda, Mark D.; Skumanich, Marina; Pulwarty, Roger S.; Lisonbeee, Joel; Hoell, Andrew; Hobbins, Mike; Haigh, Tonya; Cravens, Amanda E.

doi:10.1175/bams-d-21-0288.1

Cited by 36 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Existing drought monitoring tools are primarily designed to capture slower-developing conventional droughts, and they may not be able to adequately respond to flash droughts [43]. Therefore, improving our understanding of the unique characteristics of ecosystem responses to flash droughts is crucial to establishing effective early warning and alerting systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Plants are subject to drought stress earlier in arid regions, particularly when the pre-drought soil moisture content is lower (drier); water deficits could occur e.g. due to multiple droughts (flash drought can develop during an ongoing drought [43]). Similarly, the intensity of drought impact, defined as the peak value of the negative anomaly of ecosystem variables during a flash drought, is more significant in arid regions, where the effect of pre-drought soil moisture content is greater (figure 4(b)).…”

Section: Timing and Intensity Of Drought-induced Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flash drought drives rapid vegetation stress in arid regions in Europe

Sungmin

Park

2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Flash droughts are characterised by rapid onset, combined with the potential to severely impact agriculture and ecosystems. However, assessments of the ecological impacts of flash droughts, especially in Europe, are largely lacking. Here we investigate ecosystem responses to flash droughts in Europe between 2001 and 2019 using diverse observational data, including gross primary production (GPP) and leaf area index (LAI). We find that in arid regions an abrupt transition to water-stressed conditions occurs within a few weeks, which negatively affects vegetation status and reduces carbon uptake in the initial stages of drought; normalised anomalies of LAI and GPP decrease to about -0.5. By contrast, vegetation in humid regions is not as severely affected, given that soil moisture recovers relatively quickly. We also show that soil moisture status before the onset of drought significantly impacts the timing (1 to 5 pentads) and degree (-0.33 to -0.71 of normalised LAI/GPP anomalies) of drought-induced vegetation stress, particularly in arid regions. Our results highlight the regional characteristics of flash drought impacts for more informative monitoring and early warning systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Timing and Intensity Of Drought-induced Impactmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flash drought drives rapid vegetation stress in arid regions in Europe

Sungmin

Park

2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…These flash droughts may be driven by different physical characteristics than conventional droughts that were not adequately represented in the training data. Alternatively, the limitations in capturing flash droughts could be attributed to the monthly time step used in the model, as these events typically develop over several weeks (Otkin et al., 2022).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Machine Learning Framework for Predicting and Understanding the Canadian Drought Monitor

Mardian

Champagne

Bonsal

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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Drought is a costly natural disaster that impacts economies and ecosystems worldwide, so monitoring drought and communicating its impacts to individuals, communities, industry, and governments is important for mitigation, adaptation, and decision‐making. This research describes a novel machine learning framework to predict and understand the Canadian Drought Monitor (CDM). This fully automated approach is trained on nearly two decades of expert analysis and would assist the comprehensive monitoring of drought impacts without the continued requirement of ground support, a benefit in many data‐limited areas across the country. The framework also integrates the Shapley Additive Explanation (SHAP) variable importance metric to provide insight into drought dynamics in near real‐time, demonstrating its usefulness for understanding the value of different data sets for drought assessments and dispelling the commonly held misconception that machine learning models are not useful for inference. The results demonstrate that the model can effectively predict the CDM maps and realistically capture the evolution of drought events over time. A SHAP analysis found that the Prairie drought of 2015 was related to a strong El Niño event that reduced water supply to a region already facing long‐term water deficits, and the subsequent reduction in groundwater availability was detected by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite. Overall, this research shows strong potential to streamline the CDM methodology, integrate scientific insight into operations in near real‐time using SHAP values, and provide an avenue to retrospectively extend the CDM for evaluating current and future drought events in a historical context.

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“…From an operational monitoring perspective, the suite of potentially effective flash drought indicators can act as a complementary set of tools by which to inform flash drought response and management. However, the limitations and uncertainties with each tool must be well measured and communicated between research and operations to ensure proper use of any individual indicator (Otkin et al, 2022). In this section, we review the general characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of each class of indicator.…”

Section: Flash Drought Monitoring and Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flash drought: A state of the science review

Christian,

Hobbins,

Hoell

et al. 2024

WIREs Water

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In the two decades, since the advent of the term “flash drought,” considerable research has been directed toward the topic. Within the scientific community, we have actively forged a new paradigm that has avoided a chaotic evolution of conventional drought but instead recognizes that flash droughts have distinct dynamics and, particularly, impacts. We have moved beyond the initial debate over the definition of flash drought to a centralized focus on the triad of rapid onset, drought development, and associated impacts. The refinement toward this general set of principles has led to significant progress in determining key variables for monitoring flash drought development, identifying notable case studies, and compiling fundamental physical characteristics of flash drought. However, critical focus areas still remain, including advancing our knowledge on the atmospheric and oceanic drivers of flash drought; developing flash drought‐specific detection indices and monitoring systems tailored to practitioners; improving subseasonal‐to‐seasonal prediction of these events; constraining uncertainty in flash drought and impact projections; and using social science to further our understanding of impacts, particularly with regard to sectors that lie outside of our traditional hydroclimatological focus, such as wildfire management and food‐security monitoring. Researchers and stakeholders working together on these critical topics will assure society is resilient to flash drought in a changing climate.This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Water Extremes

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Getting ahead of Flash Drought: From Early Warning to Early Action

Cited by 36 publications

References 38 publications

Flash drought drives rapid vegetation stress in arid regions in Europe

Flash drought drives rapid vegetation stress in arid regions in Europe

A Machine Learning Framework for Predicting and Understanding the Canadian Drought Monitor

Flash drought: A state of the science review

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