According to a new study, climate change is speeding up and intensifying droughts, particularly the fast-developing heat-driven type that catches farmers off guard.
Droughts are generally being triggered faster, according to a study published in the journal Science on Thursday.
It also demonstrated that a specific and particularly nasty sudden type, dubbed "flash droughts" by experts, is leaving a growing crop-killing footprint.
More 'Flash Droughts' Suck Soil, Plants Dry
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It only occurs during the growing season-mostly summer, but also spring and fall-and is insidious because it is caused by factors other than the lack of rain or snow that causes a typical slow-onset drought, according to hydrologists and meteorologists, as per Phys.org.
The air becomes so hot and dry that it sucks the water right out of plants and soil.
It's the increasing thirstiness of the atmosphere, according to climate scientist Daniel Swain of UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not involved in the study. Swain described the issue as "extremely relevant" in light of global warming.
According to the study, the term flash drought was coined around 2000, but it really took off in 2012, when a $30 billion sudden drought hit the central United States, one of the worst droughts since the infamous Dust Bowl devastated the Plains in the 1930s.
Because it happens so quickly, people became interested in this new phenomenon, according to study lead author Xing Yuan, dean of the School of Hydrology and Water Resources at China's Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. In the case of the 2012 drought, it actually developed in a very severe state within a month.
Last summer, most of China's Yangtze River basin was hit by a flash drought caused by high temperatures, which also triggered wildfires, according to Yuan.
He claimed that parts of the river had dried up and that there was an energy shortage in southern China due to the failure of hydropower.
Another unexpected drought occurred in the United States. According to Jason Otkin, a study co-author and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the Southeast in 2016 and was a factor in devastating wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
According to Joel Lisonbee, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Integrated Drought Information System in Colorado, the current drought in the Oklahoma-Texas panhandle and Kansas began two years ago as a rapid onset drought.
He wasn't involved in the study, but he praised it, saying that a warmer world allows for faster onset of drought.
Yuan, Otkin, and their research team examined droughts, how quickly they occurred, and what type they were since 1951 and discovered that flash droughts are becoming more common in nearly three-quarters of the world's climate regions.
They also discovered that droughts of all kinds were becoming more common.
Although they couldn't quantify how much faster because of the variability in locations and times, Yuan believes it's safe to say droughts are occurring weeks earlier than they used to.
Yuan stated that Europe and Australia have seen some of the largest increases in sudden droughts. The Amazon, according to outside experts, is prone to them.
Yuan's team also used computer simulations, both with worst-case warming and more moderate warming, to predict that the proportion of flash droughts will increase in a warmer world, and droughts will become more frequent.
Experts say flash droughts are especially bad for agriculture because they are caused by low soil moisture levels.
The problem is that there has been an old way of thinking that we have months or years before we need to worry about drought, according to Mark Svoboda, director of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's National Drought Mitigation Center.
That's why Svoboda, who wasn't involved in this study, claimed to have invented the term "flash drought" in order to dispel the myth that droughts only occur over long periods of time.
Droughts can reduce crop yields, damage pastures, increase irrigation needs, and deplete water supplies, posing serious challenges for water management and food security.
Wildfires, which can destroy homes, infrastructure, and wildlife habitats, can also be exacerbated by flash droughts.
Furthermore, flash droughts can have an impact on air quality because dry conditions increase dust storms and smoke from fires.
Heat stress, respiratory problems, dehydration, and malnutrition are all possible consequences of flash droughts.
Flash droughts are expected to become more common and severe in the future as the climate changes as a result of human activity.
Flash droughts have increased in frequency and intensity in many parts of the world since 1980, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.
The study also predicted that flash droughts would continue to increase under various greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Multiple research paths, according to the authors, are needed to better understand the regional drivers of flash droughts and their complex interactions with socioeconomic impacts.
