Research recently done by the University of Southampton has found that due to climate change caused by people, flash droughts are occurring much more often. This means that it is becoming more difficult to predict and prepare for the effects of these droughts. Scientists in this research have stated that flash droughts are turning into a “normal” occurrence.
Flash droughts can happen suddenly and become very serious in just a few weeks. This is because there’s not much rain and the sun takes away lots of water from the ground quickly. Even though it starts out fast, this type of drought may stay for months, hurting plants and the environment, plus creating hot weather and fires.
A bunch of scientists from all around the world wanted to find out if droughts are becoming more sudden (called flash droughts) and what will happen if there are different levels of carbon emissions. Justin Sheffield, a professor from the University of Southampton who worked on the study, said that because of climate change, droughts start faster than before.
“In the last 64 years, flash droughts have been happening more and more often in different parts of the world.”
Scientists have noticed that more flash droughts are happening in places like East and North Asia, Europe, the Sahara, and western South America. In other areas like eastern North America, Southeast Asia, and North Australia, we’re now seeing faster droughts even if there aren’t as many fast or slow ones. The Amazon has had more slow droughts while West Africa has seen worse and more frequent occurrences of both fast and slow droughts.
Professor Justin Sheffield said: “It’s getting hotter and this is causing more frequent “flash droughts”. If we keep putting out more emissions into the environment, flash droughts will happen faster which poses a big problem for us to adapt.”
Flash droughts can have bad effects on the environment that may not be able to fix. It is hard to forecast flash droughts since we use longer time periods for predicting when a drought will happen. We need new ways to find out about flash droughts sooner and know how it will affect nature and people.
Researchers recently wrote an article about how global climate change can affect droughts in many areas. The study was helped by several different programs from China and the United Kingdom, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Newton Fund.
