Understanding the global hydrological droughts of 2003–2016 and their relationships with teleconnections

Abstract

Droughts often evolve gradually and cover large areas, and therefore, affect many people and activities. This motivates developing techniques to integrate different satellite observations, to cover large areas, and understand spatial and temporal variability of droughts. In this study, we apply probabilistic techniques to generate satellite derived meteorological, hydrological, and hydro-meteorological drought indices for the world's 156 major river basins covering 2003-2016. The data includes Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) estimates from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, along with soil moisture, precipitation, and evapotranspiration reanalysis. Different drought characteristics of trends, occurrences, areal-extent, and frequencies corresponding to 3-, 6-, 12-, and 24-month timescales are extracted from these indices. Drought evolution within selected basins of Africa, America, and Asia is interpreted. Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) is then applied to find the relationship between global hydrometeorological droughts and satellite derived Sea Surface Temperature (SST) changes. This relationship is then used to extract regions, where droughts and teleconnections are

Attribution Analysis of Hydrological Drought Risk Under Climate Change and Human Activities: A Case Study on Kuye River Basin in China

“…The results show that: (1) the annual runoff sequence of KRB changed significantly after 1979, which was consistent with the introduction of large-scale coal mining; (2) under the same drought recurrence period, the drought duration and severity in the human activity stage were significantly worse than in the natural and simulation stages, indicating that human activities changed the drought risk in this area; and (3) human activities had little impact on drought severity in the short duration and low recurrence period, but had a greater impact in the long duration and high recurrence period. These results provide scientific guidance for the management, prevention, and resistance of drought; and guarantee sustainable economic and social development in the KRB.On analyzing several research works, we found that drought is affected by climatic factors (natural climate and anthropogenic climate), environmental resource factors, topographic and geomorphic factors, water resource conditions, social and economic factors, population growth factors, coal mining, water conservancy facilities, and other land use factors [7,[9][10][11][12][13]. Strzepek et al [14] and Kirono et al [15] used global climate models to study the factors affecting drought in Australia and most parts of the United States, respectively.…”

“…On analyzing several research works, we found that drought is affected by climatic factors (natural climate and anthropogenic climate), environmental resource factors, topographic and geomorphic factors, water resource conditions, social and economic factors, population growth factors, coal mining, water conservancy facilities, and other land use factors [7,[9][10][11][12][13]. Strzepek et al [14] and Kirono et al [15] used global climate models to study the factors affecting drought in Australia and most parts of the United States, respectively.…”

Using altimetry observations combined with GRACE to select parameter sets of a hydrological model in data scarce regions

“…As altimetry data alone only contain limited information on the river flow volumes, we first identified and discarded solutions that were least likely to preserve observed the seasonal water storage (S tot ) fluctuations. To do so, the monthly modelled total water storage ( tot,mod = i + u + f + s ) relative to the 2004-2009 timemean baseline in each grid cell was compared to water storage anomalies as obtained from the GRACE data product (Tang et al, 2017;Fang et al, 2016;Forootan et al, 2019;Khaki and Awange, 2019). In the GRACE 300 product, the same time period was used for the time-mean baseline (Swenson and Wahr, 2006;Swenson, 2012;Landerer and Swenson, 2012).…”

Terrestrial water storage and Pacific SST affect the monthly water balance of Itacaiúnas River Basin (Eastern Amazonia)

“…In long-term analyses of annual water balance, the variation in terrestrial total water storage (TWS), which includes snow, ice, plant water, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater, is usually considered insignificant. However, at subannual timescales, TWS plays a critical role in the partitioning of precipitation into runoff and evapotranspiration (Milly, 1994;Reager et al, 2014;Forootan et al, 2019). For example, an elevation in the water table level can increase the fractional saturated areas, where surface runoff predominates over infiltration, and increase the vegetation access to water table directly by deeper roots or indirectly by capillary suction or water redistribution.…”