Drought assessment has been outpaced by climate change: empirical arguments for a paradigm shift

Hoylman, Zachary H.; Bocinsky, R. Kyle; Jencso, Kelsey G.

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-30316-5

i

Drought assessment has been outpaced by climate change: empirical arguments for a paradigm shift

2022
By Hoylman, Zachary H. ; Bocinsky, R. Kyle ; Jencso, Kelsey G.

Details

Journal Title:

Nature Communications
Personal Author:

Hoylman, Zachary H. ; Bocinsky, R. Kyle ; Jencso, Kelsey G.
NOAA Program & Office:

NOAA General Documents
Description:

Despite the acceleration of climate change, erroneous assumptions of climate stationarity are still inculcated in the management of water resources in the United States (US). The US system for drought detection, which triggers billions of dollars in emergency resources, adheres to this assumption with preference towards 60-year (or longer) record lengths for drought characterization. Using observed data from 1,934 Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) sites across the US, we show that conclusions based on long climate records can substantially bias assessment of drought severity. Bias emerges by assuming that conditions from the early and mid 20th century are as likely to occur in today’s climate. Numerical simulations reveal that drought assessment error is relatively low with limited climatology lengths (~30 year) and that error increases with longer record lengths where climate is changing rapidly. We assert that non-stationarity in climate must be accounted for in contemporary assessments to more accurately portray present drought risk.
Keywords:

General Biochemistry, Genetics And Molecular Biology General Chemistry General Physics And Astronomy Multidisciplinary General Biochemistry, Genetics And Molecular Biology General Physics And Astronomy General Biochemistry, Genetics And Molecular Biology General Physics And Astronomy
Source:

Nature Communications, 13(1)
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30316-5
ISSN:

2041-1723
Format:

PDF
Publisher:

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Document Type:

Journal Article
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha256:e215e272f3b3567fd4cfba187fc0098f96392d90e779c7d1b11e6867b9ddf984
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/58540/noaa_58540_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 2.23 MB ]

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