Impacts of Global Climate Warming on Meteorological and Hydrological Droughts and Their Propagations

Meteorological to hydrological drought propagation has been widely studied to reflect the relationship between these drought categories and better understand drought mechanisms. However, global warming may alter the drought propagation features, which are not fully understood. This study aims to investigate changes in meteorological and hydrological drought conditions, especially their propagation features in 1.5-3.0 degrees C warmer climates for 8,655 watersheds globally. First, the three-month scale standardized precipitation index and the standardized runoff index are calculated based on the precipitation simulated by the 15 global climate models and the runoff simulated by the four hydrological models, respectively. Drought events are then identified using the run theory, followed by the calculation of drought propagation features (i.e., pooling, lag, and lengthening) for matched meteorological and hydrological droughts. As a result, both meteorological and hydrological drought conditions (i.e., duration and severity) would relieve in warmer climates due to increased precipitation for regions excluding Western North America, South America, the Mediterranean, Southern Africa, East Asia, and Australia. However, the drought conditions would be more severe during drought propagation from meteorological to hydrological droughts over most regions. During drought propagation, the worsening drought conditions over half of the regions would be more serious first and then relieved with the rising temperature. These results indicate that efforts to slow down global warming can suppress the deterioration of drought conditions in the propagation.

Automated summary

This study investigates changes in meteorological and hydrological drought conditions in 8,655 watersheds globally under 1.5-3.0 degrees C warmer climates. The results show that, except for certain regions, both meteorological and hydrological drought conditions would be relieved in warmer climates due to increased precipitation. However, the severity of drought conditions would increase during the propagation from meteorological to hydrological droughts, with more severe conditions occurring first and then being relieved with rising temperatures. Efforts to slow down global warming are crucial to suppress the deterioration of drought conditions during propagation.