The asymmetric impact of global warming on US drought types and distributions in a large ensemble of 97 hydro-climatic simulations

Huang, Shengzhi; Leng, Guoyong; Huang, Qiang; Xie, Yangyang; Liu, Saiyan; Meng, Erhao; Pei, Li

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-06302-z

Cited by 32 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…The spatiotemporal variations in the irrigation effect found in our results highlight the strong influence of background climate conditions. With projected shifting precipitation patterns and more frequent droughts and heatwaves in the future (Huang et al, ; Wuebbles et al, ), a large expansion of irrigation would be required to sustain current maize yield trends in the United States (DeLucia et al, ; McDonald & Girvetz, ). Within this context, irrigation effects are expected to be intensified, leading to a greater synergistic effect of crop yield increase and cooling benefit.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying irrigation cooling benefits to maize yield in the US Midwest

Guan

Peng

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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Irrigation is an important adaptation strategy to improve crop resilience to global climate change. Irrigation plays an essential role in sustaining crop production in waterlimited regions, as irrigation water not only benefits crops through fulfilling crops' water demand but also creates an evaporative cooling that mitigates crop heat stress.Here we use satellite remote sensing and maize yield data in the state of Nebraska, USA, combined with statistical models, to quantify the contribution of cooling and water supply to the yield benefits due to irrigation. Results show that irrigation leads to a considerable cooling on daytime land surface temperature (−1.63°C in July), an increase in enhanced vegetation index (+0.10 in July), and 81% higher maize yields compared to rainfed maize. These irrigation effects vary along the spatial and temporal gradients of precipitation and temperature, with a greater effect in dry and hot conditions, and decline toward wet and cool conditions. We find that 16% of irrigation yield increase is due to irrigation cooling, while the rest (84%) is due to water supply and other factors. The irrigation cooling effect is also observed on air temperature (−0.38 to −0.53°C) from paired flux sites in Nebraska. This study highlights the non-negligible contribution of irrigation cooling to the yield benefits of irrigation, and such an effect may become more important in the future with continued warming and more frequent droughts. K E Y W O R D Scooling, irrigation, LST, maize yield, water

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying irrigation cooling benefits to maize yield in the US Midwest

Guan

Peng

et al. 2020

Global Change Biology

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“…The strength of the relationships between (i) the Köppen-Geiger climate type classification (Kottek et al, 2006) shown in Fig. 1 and (ii) certain model characteristics on SPI-n were quantified using a variety of tests.…”

Section: Timescales Of Drought Propagationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of climate type on timescales of drought propagation in an ensemble of global hydrological models

Gevaert

Veldkamp

Ward

2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Drought is a natural hazard that occurs at many temporal and spatial scales and has severe environmental and socioeconomic impacts across the globe. The impacts of drought change as drought evolves from precipitation deficits to deficits in soil moisture or streamflow. Here, we quantified the time taken for drought to propagate from meteorological drought to soil moisture drought and from meteorological drought to hydrological drought. We did this by cross-correlating the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) against standardized indices (SIs) of soil moisture, runoff, and streamflow from an ensemble of global hydrological models (GHMs) forced by a consistent meteorological dataset. Drought propagation is strongly related to climate types, occurring at sub-seasonal timescales in tropical climates and at up to multi-annual timescales in continental and arid climates. Winter droughts are usually related to longer SPI accumulation periods than summer droughts, especially in continental and tropical savanna climates. The difference between the seasons is likely due to winter snow cover in the former and distinct wet and dry seasons in the latter. Model structure appears to play an important role in model variability, as drought propagation to soil moisture drought is slower in land surface models (LSMs) than in global hydrological models, but propagation to hydrological drought is faster in land surface models than in global hydrological models. The propagation time from SPI to hydrological drought in the models was evaluated against observed data at 127 in situ streamflow stations. On average, errors between observed and modeled drought propagation timescales are small and the model ensemble mean is preferred over the use of a single model. Nevertheless, there is ample opportunity for improvement as substantial differences in drought propagation are found at 10 % of the study sites. A better understanding and representation of drought propagation in models may help improve seasonal drought forecasting as well as constrain drought variability under future climate scenarios.

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“…The United States is one of the most affected countries by weather hazards, and has experienced an increase in economic losses and human casualties in recent decades (Kunkel et al 1999b, Gall et al 2011Wobus et al 2014). This has motivated a number of studies examining the changes, impacts and the underlying mechanisms of extreme weather hazards (Pielke and Downton 2000;Jonkman 2005;Ashley and Ashley 2008;Changnon 2008Wobus et al 2014Leng et al 2016;Huang et al 2017;Zhou et al 2017). However, most of previous studies were hazard specific, based on a single type of indicator (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent changes in vulnerability and responses of economic and human systems to major extreme weather hazards in the United States

Zhou

Leng

et al. 2020

Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk

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Reducing the impacts and risk of weather hazards requires better knowledge of the regions that are most affected in terms of economic damage, fatality and injury. While understanding of weather hazards has greatly improved, regional vulnerability to weather hazards of various types has not been well assessed in the United States. Through a compilation of event-based records of eight types of weather hazards for 1996-2016 at the national, regional and state levels, our analysis shows large differences in the change trends in economic damage, fatality and injury caused by drought, coastal flood, hail and wildfire, demonstrating the inconsistent responses of economic and human systems to weather hazards of various types at the state level. Despite a general increase in annual occurrences, spatial analysis shows that vulnerability to tornado and hail has decreased significantly in most of the country. Our results have great implications for adaptation and mitigation strategies, through identifying the vulnerable regions and types of hazards that require more urgent efforts for reducing economic and human losses. It is, however, important to keep in mind that the results may depend on the records, indicators and time periods used for the analysis. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACTThe spatial differences in different economic impacts induced by weather hazards of various types. The figure shows the regions that are most vulnerable to each type of hazards in terms of annual mean damage and individual mean damage. ARTICLE HISTORYIdentification and spatial distribution of dominant weather hazards according to (a) annual mean damage and (c) individual mean damage (i.e. DPE) at the state level for the period 1996-2016. The mean damage values and variances of the corresponding dominant hazard in (a) and (c) are illustrated in the (b) and (d), respectively.

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The asymmetric impact of global warming on US drought types and distributions in a large ensemble of 97 hydro-climatic simulations

Cited by 32 publications

References 81 publications

Quantifying irrigation cooling benefits to maize yield in the US Midwest

Quantifying irrigation cooling benefits to maize yield in the US Midwest

The effect of climate type on timescales of drought propagation in an ensemble of global hydrological models

Recent changes in vulnerability and responses of economic and human systems to major extreme weather hazards in the United States

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