Climate change impacts on conventional and flash droughts in the Mekong River Basin

Kang, Hyunwoo; Sridhar, Venkataramana; Ali, Syed Azhar

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155845

Cited by 30 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…For example, Mishra et al (2021) attributed the projected increased flash drought frequency in India to increased intraseasonal variability of the monsoon, with increased flash drought risk following failed or delayed monsoon onset. Kang et al (2022) found similar results for the Mekong River Basin in southeast Asia. In contrast, projected increasing flash drought frequency in parts of North America are attributed to large increases in evaporative demand relative to modest increases in both total precipitation and precipitation variability (Hoffmann et al, 2021;Christian et al, 2023).…”

Section: Flash Drought In a Changing Climatesupporting

confidence: 71%

“…Recent studies have attempted to close this gap by coupling global climate model projections with land surface model simulations of soil moisture or streamflow, suggesting the increased evaporative demand and precipitation variability translate into more frequent or more rapid soil moisture flash droughts (Qing et al, 2022;Yuan et al, 2023). Nevertheless, flash drought frequency is sensitive to the extent to which precipitation is projected to change, and larger increases somewhat mitigate the effects of increased evaporative demand (Kang et al, 2022). This effect may contribute to a smaller magnitude change in flash drought frequency under the highest emission scenarios relative to moderate or low scenarios (Christian et al, 2023), because the former tends to produce the largest increase in precipitation in many regions by the late 21st Century.…”

Section: Flash Drought In a Changing Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Flash Drought In a Changing Climatesupporting

confidence: 71%

Section: Flash Drought In a Changing Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

Flash drought: A state of the science review

Christian,

Hobbins,

Hoell

et al. 2024

WIREs Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Kang et al. (2022) applied the VIC model to evaluate the impact of future climate change (2020–2099) on flash drought in the Mekong River Basin. Ran et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Li, Wang, Wu, Guo, & Chen, 2020). Kang et al (2022) applied the VIC model to evaluate the impact of future climate change (2020-2099) on flash drought in the Mekong River Basin. Ran et al (2020) used the VIC model and the downscaled CMIP5 model outputs to project the spatiotemporal characteristics of flash droughts in the Jinghe River basin of China (2031China ( -2060.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Projection of Flash Droughts in the Headstream Area of Tarim River Basin Under Climate Change Through Bayesian Uncertainty Analysis

GUI

et al. 2023

JGR Atmospheres

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The Tarim River, the largest inland river in China, sits in the Tarim River Basin (TRB), which is an arid area with the ecosystem primarily sustained by water from melting snow and glaciers in the headstream area. To evaluate the pressures of natural disasters in this climate‐change‐sensitive basin, this study projected flash droughts in the headstream area of the TRB. We used the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model to describe the hydrological processes of the study area, Markov chain Monte Carlo to quantify the parameter uncertainty of the VIC model. Ten downscaled general circulation models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) were used to drive the VIC model, and the standardized evaporative stress ratio was applied to identify flash droughts. The results demonstrated that the VIC model after Bayesian parameters uncertainty analysis can efficiently describe the hydrological processes of the study area. In the future (2021–2100), compared with the plain region, the alpine region has higher flash drought frequency and intensity. Compared with the historical period (1961–2014), the frequency, duration, and intensity of flash droughts tend to increase throughout the study area, especially for the alpine area. Moreover, based on variance decomposition, CMIP6 model is the most important uncertainty source for flash drought projection, followed by the shared socioeconomic pathway of climate change scenario and VIC model parameters.

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“…Overall, our findings suggest that global groundwater biodiversity and interactions can be considered as a first‐order estimator for surface biodiversity (Figure 3a). For example, when we focussed into the Po (North Italy; Figure 2b; Figure S13b) and Mekong (Southeast Asia; Figure 2c; Figure S15b) river basins, two areas that in 2022 experienced the worst droughts in 70 years (Bonaldo et al., 2023; Kang et al., 2022), distinctive patterns emerged. The Po basin shows a high groundwater ecosystem biodiversity close to the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea with medium interconnectivity to surface waters compared to other global systems (Supporting Information Section 3).…”

Section: Shaping Groundwater As a Keystone Ecosystemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Groundwater is a hidden global keystone ecosystem

Saccò,

Mammola,

Altermatt

et al. 2023

Global Change Biology

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Groundwater is a vital ecosystem of the global water cycle, hosting unique biodiversity and providing essential services to societies. Despite being the largest unfrozen freshwater resource, in a period of depletion by extraction and pollution, groundwater environments have been repeatedly overlooked in global biodiversity conservation agendas. Disregarding the importance of groundwater as an ecosystem ignores its critical role in preserving surface biomes. To foster timely global conservation of groundwater, we propose elevating the concept of keystone species into the realm of ecosystems, claiming groundwater as a keystone ecosystem that influences the integrity of many dependent ecosystems. Our global analysis shows that over half of land surface areas (52.6%) has a medium‐to‐high interaction with groundwater, reaching up to 74.9% when deserts and high mountains are excluded. We postulate that the intrinsic transboundary features of groundwater are critical for shifting perspectives towards more holistic approaches in aquatic ecology and beyond. Furthermore, we propose eight key themes to develop a science‐policy integrated groundwater conservation agenda. Given ecosystems above and below the ground intersect at many levels, considering groundwater as an essential component of planetary health is pivotal to reduce biodiversity loss and buffer against climate change.

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Climate change impacts on conventional and flash droughts in the Mekong River Basin

Cited by 30 publications

References 81 publications

Flash drought: A state of the science review

Flash drought: A state of the science review

Projection of Flash Droughts in the Headstream Area of Tarim River Basin Under Climate Change Through Bayesian Uncertainty Analysis

Groundwater is a hidden global keystone ecosystem

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