Abrupt Agricultural Flash Drought: Investigating Flash Drought Events over Agricultural Regions of the United States

Flash droughts are a highly impactful, subseasonal to seasonal phenomenon that pose serious risk to several groups of stakeholders, including agricultural producers. One major example includes the 2012 flash drought event over the United States, which resulted in tens of billions of dollars of crop loss and caused longer-lasting effects to the overall US economy. This study aims to quantify impactful flash drought events that have occurred over two agricultural regions of the central United States over a 40 year period from 1981 to 2020. These two regions, referred to as the Southern Great Plains and Midwest, were selected as they are agriculturally-dense areas that are located spatially close to one another, yet are in distinctively unique climate regions. 

Using the standardized evaporative stress ratio (SESR) for flash drought identification, events are selected based on several factors, including spatial coverage and spontaneous nature of onset and spread across the region. Given the sudden nature of rapid drought intensification with these events, there is less time for farmers to implement mitigation strategies and remain resilient to the droughts. We define these events as abrupt agricultural flash droughts (AAFDs). Initial results show changes to the timing and frequency of AAFD events over the Southern Great Plains and Midwest. More specifically, over the last 20 years, AAFDs have increased in frequency by 100-200% across critical regions of agricultural growth, suggesting these events are likely to pose increased risk to agricultural producers in the near future.