EGU24-4814, updated on 08 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4814
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Global dryness could intensify vegetation failure even after net-negative emission is achieved

Sanjit Kumar Mondal1, Soon-Il An2, Seung-Ki Min3, Tong Jiang4, Buda Su5, Seungmok Paik6, and Soong-Ki Kim7
Sanjit Kumar Mondal et al.
  • 1Irreversible Climate Change Research Center, Yonsei University, Korea, Republic of (z8019937@yonsei.ac.kr)
  • 2Department of Atmospheric Sciences/Irreversible Climate Change Research Center,Yonsei University, Korea, Republic of
  • 3Division of Environmental Science and Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, South Korea
  • 4Institute for Disaster Risk Management/School of Geographical Science, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
  • 5Institute for Disaster Risk Management/School of Geographical Science, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
  • 6Irreversible Climate Change Research Center, Yonsei University, Korea, Republic of
  • 7Irreversible Climate Change Research Center, Yonsei University, Korea, Republic of

The response of global dryness and vegetation to CO2 removal experiments, especially for net-
 negative emission is immature. Here we conducted a thorough investigation to identify hysteresis and reversibility in global dryness, as well as the vegetation productivity’s response to dry and wet episodes, considering their asymmetrical nature. The asymmetry index (AI) includes two important aspects such as positive AI indicates a dominant increase of vegetation productivity during wet episodes compared to the decline in dry episodes and negative AI implies a larger reduction of productivity in dry years compared to an increase in wet years. Aggregate results from various drought indices and vegetation productivity reveal a dominant dryness in the CO2 decrease phase. Global dryness shows strong hysteresis and irreversible behavior over half of the global land with significant regional disparity. Irreversible changes in dryness are concentrated in specific areas, i.e., hotspots, covering over 14% of the global land, particularly pronounced in Northern Africa, Southwest Russia, and Central America. Moreover, a wider spread of negative asymmetry indicates a significant decrease in vegetation productivity caused by dryness. Importantly, the potential evapotranspiration is projected to be the primary driver of global dryness as well as vegetation asymmetry. Our findings suggest only CO2 alleviation is not enough to cope with drought rather implementing advanced water management strategies is a must to mitigate the impact of drought effectively.

How to cite: Mondal, S. K., An, S.-I., Min, S.-K., Jiang, T., Su, B., Paik, S., and Kim, S.-K.: Global dryness could intensify vegetation failure even after net-negative emission is achieved, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-4814, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-4814, 2024.