Examining the contribution of climate change on global soil moisture drought characteristics
- 1Technical University of Crete, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Chania, Greece (akoutroulis@tuc.gr)
- 2Technical University of Crete, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Chania, Greece (egrillakis@tuc.gr)
- 3School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (simon.gosling@nottingham.ac.uk)
- 4Institute of Physical Geography, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany (hannes.mueller.schmied@em.uni-frankfurt.de)
- 5Water Security Research Group, Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361, Laxenburg, Austria (burek@iiasa.ac.at )
- 6Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA (sian.kougiesbrecht@gmail.com)
- 7School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China (QiWei_waterresources@hotmail.com)
- 8Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48823, United States (ypokhrel@msu.edu)
- 9Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea (yusuke.satoh@kaist.ac.kr)
- 10Technical University of Crete, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Chania, Greece (tsanis@hydromech.gr)
- 11Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany (lina.stein@uni-potsdam.de)
- 12Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Department of Water and Climate, Brussels, Belgium (wim.thiery@vub.be)
Drought is commonly perceived as a natural hazard that evolves gradually. However, the recent increase in both the onset rate and severity of these events has drawn significant attention [1]. Both climate change and human activities contribute to the alteration of drought characteristics, affecting their development speed and intensity. For instance, climate change may indirectly influence droughts through alterations in the amount and distribution of precipitation and evapotranspiration, whereas human activities like land management can directly impact soil water content. This study employs the ISIMIP Global Water models [2, 3], driven by the hypothetical stationary ISIMIP3a climate dataset without climate change, and transient land use changes based on empirical observations [4]. We utilize soil moisture as an indicator of water deficit and a method to calculate the hydrological drought propagation speed to delineate drought characteristics. We contrast these results with those from historical simulations that include climate-related forcings based on empirical data to assess the historical long-term changes attributed to climate change. Our findings indicate that climate change significantly affects the development speed and intensity of droughts. Regions such as the rainforests of South America, Europe, and Southern Australia are identified as hotspots of more aggressive droughts, whereas areas like the East African mountains might experience milder droughts due to climate change. These variations could critically affect agricultural productivity, ecosystem health, and water availability for human consumption. The potential future acceleration of droughts underscores the importance of enhancing risk management and challenges existing drought hazard prediction research and practice.
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How to cite: Koutroulis, A., Grillakis, M., Gosling, S., Schmied, H. M., Burek, P., Kou-Giesbrecht, S., Qi, W., Pokhrel, Y., Satoh, Y., Tsanis, I., Stein, L., and Thiery, W.: Examining the contribution of climate change on global soil moisture drought characteristics, 18th Plinius Conference on Mediterranean Risks, Chania, Greece, 30 Sep–3 Oct 2024, Plinius18-46, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-plinius18-46, 2024.
