New Study Reveals Emergence of Faster 'Flash Droughts' Globally

Flash droughts have been compared to flash floods as its polar opposite, and an emerging natural phenomenon by the scientific community.

These extreme drying events are described to be short-lived, yet result in the quick depletion of soil moisture, severely affecting agriculture and the economy.

In a new study, rising global temperatures have been suspected to cause the further intensification of flash droughts; in terms of speed and coverage not only in the United States but also across the globe.

This adds to the evidence of the catastrophic effects of climate change.

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Texas Tech University, and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University discovered in their new research that the frequency of flash droughts has remained stable over the past two decades.

Flash Droughts

Flash droughts accelerated by approximately 3% to 19%, transforming new areas into drought conditions within five days, according to Professor Zong-Liang Yang, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications on March 3.

Yang emphasized that this phenomenon has been observed for a long time and even intensified the conditions in drought-prone areas, such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, and central North America, by around 22% to 59%.

The study suggested the importance to understand flash droughts, especially humidity and variable weather patterns, and the necessity to make preparations against them.

Drought-Detecting Technology

The growing awareness of flash droughts is not made possible without the use of drought-detecting technology and modeling tools, which were also used in the said study, according to Mark Svoboda, the director of the National Drought Mitigation Center and the proponent of the term "flash drought," as cited by Phys.org.

Some of the many cases of flash droughts were detected in the central United States in the summer of 2012 when corn crops withered and resulted in an estimated $35.7 billion worth of economic losses.

Meanwhile, flash droughts in Southern China affected 2 million hectares of crops, as per the Met Office, the UK government's official weather agency.

These findings are based on a separate collaborative study between the UK and China regarding how flash droughts develop and change in the future.

Drought and Climate Change

Flash droughts are still considered droughts but have developed at a significantly quick rate compared to their usual climatic event counterpart.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), climate change, specifically global warming, affects drought in two ways: aggravating regional temperatures and altering atmospheric circulation patterns.

First, the NRDC explained that rising temperatures caused by global warming make wet regions wetter, making warm air absorb more water, and results in frequent and larger rainfall.

Climate change also amplifies the climatic conditions in the dry arid regions.

Although flash droughts are a newly emerging term over recent years, our knowledge of normal droughts and their evident effects on crops, water supply, and ecology is established.

Following the study, the researchers claimed that aside from theoretical knowledge alone of these events, the importance of "on-the-ground" planning is crucial to mitigate the detrimental effects of flash droughts.