Unraveling the influence of atmospheric evaporative demand on drought and its response to climate change

Vicente‐Serrano, Sergio M.; McVicar, Tim R.; Miralles, Diego G.; Yang, Yuting; Tomás-Burguera, Miquel

doi:10.1002/wcc.632

Cited by 178 publications

(185 citation statements)

References 263 publications

(496 reference statements)

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“…Recent studies 24 , 50 – 53 show the better performance of summer standardised precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) 24 , 54 , 55 in capturing the drought impacts on hydrological, ecological and agricultural variables than the standard precipitation index (SPI) or the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI). The SPI is not particularly appropriate for our application where both temperature and precipitation are important, since it neither considers the effects of increasing temperature over the recent decades 6 , 56 , nor the much larger warming scenario which is expected under future climate change scenarios 7 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased future occurrences of the exceptional 2018–2019 Central European drought under global warming

Hari

Rakovec

Markonis

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

298

212

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Since the spring 2018, a large part of Europe has been in the midst of a record-setting drought. Using long-term observations, we demonstrate that the occurrence of the 2018-2019 (consecutive) summer drought is unprecedented in the last 250 years, and its combined impact on the growing season vegetation activities is stronger compared to the 2003 European drought. Using a suite of climate model simulation outputs, we underpin the role of anthropogenic warming on exacerbating the future risk of such a consecutive drought event. Under the highest Representative Concentration Pathway, (RCP 8.5), we notice a seven-fold increase in the occurrence of the consecutive droughts, with additional 40 (± 5) million ha of cultivated areas being affected by such droughts, during the second half of the twenty-first century. The occurrence is significantly reduced under low and medium scenarios (RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5), suggesting that an effective mitigation strategy could aid in reducing the risk of future consecutive droughts. Human-induced climate change is evident and it poses a great concern to society, primarily due to its potential to intensify extreme events around the globe 1,2. In the past 2 decades, Europe experienced an increased frequency of droughts 3,4 with estimated loss of about EUR 100 billion 5. One such devastating event was the drought in summer 2003, which was an exceptionally warm and dry year across most of central and western Europe. Historical reconstructions since 1500 C.E. suggest that it was one of the hottest summers 6 , and the event was estimated to result in a 30% reduction in gross primary production compared to previous years between 1998-2002 3. Although, the 2003 drought event was rare and exceptional, even in a multi-centennial time window, its likelihood is expected to increase in the near future 7 , mainly due to the anthropogenic warming 8-11. In the summer of 2018, temperature anomaly broke the record again in several locations across Europe, but with distinct spatial patterns. While in summer 2003 the increase in temperature was more concentrated in central and southern Europe (Fig. 1a), summer 2018 was characterised by an anomalous increase in central and northeastern Europe (Fig. 1b). Unlike the 2003 event-where the temperature anomaly (Supplementary Fig. S1) and the ecosystem carbon and energy fluxes recovered early after the summer 12 , the extreme event of 2018 persisted to the subsequent year 2019 (Fig. 1c). For all these years, the impact was strongest in the Central European region, where the increase in temperature was accompanied by concurrent significant reduction of summer precipitation (Fig. 1d-f), which led to extreme drought conditions. The intensity and spatial extent of droughts significantly affects the plant and agricultural productivity 13,14 , underlying the severity of the drought impact in Central European region, where the focus on agriculture is strong 3,7,15-17. With the use of remote sensing data-sets 18 , we find that the concurrent increased temperature with de...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased future occurrences of the exceptional 2018–2019 Central European drought under global warming

Hari

Rakovec

Markonis

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

298

212

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Overall, the debate on the role of AED on drought severity (B. Cook et al, 2018;Dai et al, 2018;Greve et al, 2019) originates mainly from the notion that the role of AED is complex, depending largely on the drought type (e.g., meteorological, hydrological, and environmental) and prevailing climatic conditions (S. M. Vicente-Serrano, McVicar, et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While this assumption seems to be feasible, the inclusion of AED in climate drought indices cannot be introduced as a substitute of ET. Rather, irrespective of ET rates, accounting for the role of AED in drought metrics has a strong physical meaning with real implications in the intensification of hydrological, agricultural and environmental droughts (S. M. Vicente-Serrano, McVicar, et al, 2020). In the same context, some studies suggest that AED could not be seen as a good metric of plant water demand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Characterization of the Varying Responses of the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index to Atmospheric Evaporative Demand

et al. 2020

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The standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) is one of the well‐established drought metrics worldwide. It is simply computed using precipitation and atmospheric evaporative demand (AED) data. Although AED is considered a key driver of drought variability worldwide, it could have less impact on drought in specific regions and for particular times as a function of the magnitude of precipitation. Specifically, the influence of the AED might overestimate drought severity during both normal and humid periods, resulting in “false alarms” about drought impacts on physical and human environments. Here, we provided a global characterization of the sensitivity of the SPEI to changes of the AED. Results demonstrate that the contribution of AED to drought severity is largely impacted by the spatial and temporal variability of precipitation. Specifically, the impact of AED on drought severity was more pronounced during periods of low precipitation, compared to wet periods. Interestingly, drought severity in humid regions (as revealed by SPEI) also showed low sensitivity to AED under drier conditions. These results highlight the skill of SPEI in identifying the role of AED in drought evolution, especially in arid and semiarid regions whose climate is characterized typically by low precipitation. This advantage was also evident for humid environments, where SPEI did not overestimate drought severity due to the increased AED. These findings highlight the broader applicability of SPEI to accurately characterize drought severity worldwide.

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“…CC BY 4.0 License. moisture changes needs also to be investigated, since simple temperature-based formulas may overestimate the temperature effects on evapotranspiration (Sheffield et al, 2012;Vicente-Serrano et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the response of soil moisture to climate variability in the Mediterranean region

Mimeau¹,

Tramblay²,

Brocca³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Future climate scenarios for the Mediterranean region indicate a possible decrease in annual precipitation associated with an intensification of extreme rainfall events in the coming years. A major challenge in this region is to evaluate the impacts of changing precipitation patterns on extreme hydrological events such as droughts and floods. For this, it is important to understand the impact of climate change on soil moisture since it is a proxy for agricultural droughts and the antecedent soil moisture condition plays a key role on runoff generation. This study focuses on 10 sites, located in Southern France, with available soil moisture, temperature, and precipitation observations on a 10 year time period. Soil moisture is simulated at each site at the hourly time step using a model of soil water content. The sensitivity of the simulated soil moisture to different changes in precipitation and temperature is evaluated by simulating the soil moisture response to temperature and precipitation scenarios generated using a delta change method for temperature and a stochastic model (Neyman-Scott rectangular pulse model) for precipitation. Results show that soil moisture is more impacted by changes in precipitation intermittence than precipitation intensity and temperature. Overall, increased temperature and precipitation intensity associated with more intermittent precipitation leads to decreased soil moisture and an increase in the annual number of days with dry soil moisture conditions. In particular, a temperature increase of +4 °C combined with a decrease of annual rainfall between 10 and 20 %, corresponding to the current available climate scenarios for the Mediterranean, lead to a lengthening of the drought period from June to October 15 with in average +22 days of soil moisture drought per year.

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Unraveling the influence of atmospheric evaporative demand on drought and its response to climate change

Cited by 178 publications

References 263 publications

Increased future occurrences of the exceptional 2018–2019 Central European drought under global warming

Increased future occurrences of the exceptional 2018–2019 Central European drought under global warming

Global Characterization of the Varying Responses of the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index to Atmospheric Evaporative Demand

Modeling the response of soil moisture to climate variability in the Mediterranean region

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