Drought intensification in Brazilian catchments: implications for water and land management

Abstract

Droughts exert widespread impacts on both natural and social systems, and there is accumulating evidence that this situation may worsen in the context of global warming. Despite the importance of assessing changes in droughts to understand their potential future impacts on society, studies are unevenly distributed worldwide. In this study, utilizing bias-corrected CMIP6 simulations and a standard precipitation-evaporation index based approach, we quantified expected changes in future drought properties across 735 Brazilian catchments under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios. Beyond evaluating the statistical properties of future droughts, we assessed their occurrence under both land use and water demand perspectives and propose a new framework to better understand their link with changes in long- and short-term conditions of precipitation ( P ) and potential evapotranspiration ( PET ). Our results indicate that drought events are projected to become more frequent and severe in the future, with high CMIP6 model agreement. According to the SSP5-8.5 scenario, at least half of Brazilian cropland and pasture areas will experience an increase of over 30% in drought properties by the end of the century. Furthermore, among the 85% of catchments expected to experience more severe droughts, nearly 90% are also projected to exhibit increased water demand, which will likely exacerbate future water scarcity. The investigation of the relationship between droughts changes and climate variables suggests that catchments with augmented droughts in the future will likely exhibit increased long-term average PET and P -variability, but not necessarily long-term average P . For instance, over 50% of evaluated Brazilian catchments are expected to experience an intensification of drought properties even with increases in Pmean . We believe this study may contribute (a) to improve Brazilian water resiliency by helping achieve the objectives of the National Water Security Plan and (b) to deepen our understanding of droughts in an uncertain future.