Abstract
The fraction of land area over the Continental United States experiencing extreme hot and dry conditions has been increasing over the past several decades, consistent with expectation from anthropogenic climate change. A clear concurrent change in precipitation, however, has not been confirmed. Vapor pressure deficit (VPD), combining temperature and humidity, is utilized here as an indicator of the background atmospheric conditions associated with meteorological drought. Furthermore, atmospheric conditions associated with warm season drought events are assessed by partitioning associated VPD anomalies into the temperature and humidity components. This approach suggests that the concurrence of anomalously high temperature and low humidity was an important driver of the rapid development and evolution of the exceptionally severe 2011 Texas and the 2012 Great Plains droughts. By classification of a decade of extreme drought events and tracking them back in time, it was found that near surface atmospheric temperature and humidity add essential information to the commonly used precipitation-based drought indicators and can advance efforts to determine the timing of drought onset and its severity.
Highlights
Drought is a multifaceted climate phenomenon, often occurring at large spatial and temporal scales
The U.S Drought Monitor (USDM) based drought probability maps suggest that severe droughts are most frequent over western Continental United States (CONUS), and that the probability of drought is generally higher in summer than other seasons
Both SPI3 and SPEI3 are calculated using the entire-year record (1900–2013), but the probability maps are calculated using a subset of the record
Summary
Drought is a multifaceted climate phenomenon, often occurring at large spatial and temporal scales. Droughts can span multiple years and extend to continental spatial scales. Drought is associated with numerous severe societal impacts ranging from reduced water availability for human consumption to agricultural failure and famine. Drought is often associated with other extreme weather and climate events, such as heatwaves and extreme temperatures [1,2,3], and is impacted by their changes [4]. Drought is among the costliest of natural disasters [5,6]. Because of associated high societal costs, advanced forecasting of drought and associated extreme events can provide valuable information to aid in preparation [7]. One challenge to systematically improving forecasts is that drought onset, severity, duration, and areal extent may vary from one climate regime to another, requiring regional analysis of indicators used to determine drought occurrence and severity
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