Accelerating flash droughts induced by the joint influence of soil moisture depletion and atmospheric aridity

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2022

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Abstract

The emergence of flash drought has attracted widespread attention due to its rapid onset. However, little is known about the recent evolution of flash droughts in terms of the speed of onset and the causes of such a rapid onset phase of flash droughts. Here, we present a comprehensive assessment of the onset development of flash droughts and the underlying mechanisms on a global scale. We find that 33.64−46.18% of flash droughts with 5-day onset of drying, and there is a significant increasing trend in the proportion of flash droughts with the 1-pentad onset time globally during the period 2000−2020. Flash droughts do not appear to be occurring more frequently in most global regions, just coming on faster. In addition, atmospheric aridity is likely to create a flash drought-prone environment, and the joint influence of soil moisture depletion and atmospheric aridity further accelerates the rapid onset of flash droughts.

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Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

flash droughts, speed of onset, global scale, joint influence, atmospheric aridity, soil moisture depletion

Citation

Qing, Y., Wang, S., Ancell, B.C. et al. Accelerating flash droughts induced by the joint influence of soil moisture depletion and atmospheric aridity. Nat Commun 13, 1139 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28752-4

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28752-4
 https://hdl.handle.net/2346/91878

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