Article
Engineering, Environmental
Mahrukh Yousaf, Zulfiqar Ali, Muhammad Mohsin, Maryam Ilyas, Muhammad Shakeel
Summary: This study proposes a new weighting scheme called weighted aggregation (WA) and introduces the Multi-model weighted drought severity index (MMWDSI) as an improved indicator for drought assessment. The MMWDSI approach involves ensemble modeling using the WA scheme and incorporating the K-components Gaussian mixture model (K-CGMM) for appropriate distribution fitting. It proves to be a flexible and effective method that enhances accuracy in drought monitoring, allowing for inferring extreme events and assessing trends.
STOCHASTIC ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND RISK ASSESSMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Alexander Koch, Wannes Hubau, Simon L. Lewis
Summary: Tropical forests have been a significant carbon sink in the past few decades, but recent research shows that this sink is saturated and declining in the long term. Climate models and statistical models provide different projections on the future carbon sink, with potential impacts of climate change on tropical forest ecosystems. The discrepancies between model projections and observational data highlight the importance of accurately representing vegetation mortality in future climate projections.
Article
Engineering, Civil
Kai Xu, Chuanhao Wu, Ce Zhang, Bill X. Hu
Summary: This study assessed the projection and uncertainty of drought characteristics in the Pearl River basin in southern China using three drought indices. The results showed that the uncertainty in projected drought indices was mainly influenced by GCMs and RCPs, with SPI tending to underestimate drought changes. GCMs contributed over 90% of the total uncertainty in drought projections, while RCPs had a limited impact.
JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Yi Wu, Chiyuan Miao, Xuewei Fan, Jiaojiao Gou, Qi Zhang, Haiyan Zheng
Summary: Decomposing the uncertainty of global climate models is crucial for understanding climate change. The study compares sources of uncertainty in temperature and precipitation projections from different phases of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and investigates the effectiveness of bias correction methods. The findings provide insights into model characteristics and offer decision-makers more accurate information for climate mitigation and adaptation measures.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Feng Xu, Virgilio A. Bento, Yanping Qu, Qianfeng Wang
Summary: In this study, the daily SPEI algorithm was used to project global drought conditions during 2016-2100 based on the CMIP6 data. The influence of climate factors on drought was explored through partial correlation analysis. The results show that drought conditions projected by CMIP6 are similar under different models, but vary widely across regions. Most regions around the world are expected to experience increasingly severe drought conditions in the future.
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Parisa Hosseinzadehtalaei, Bert Van Schaeybroeck, Piet Termonia, Hossein Tabari
Summary: Climate change has different impacts on different types of drought, with greater uncertainty and signal-to-noise ratios for agricultural drought compared to meteorological drought. This global study compares climate change signals, uncertainty, and signal-to-noise ratios between meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural droughts. The study found that the spatial extent and magnitude of drought characteristics increase from meteorological to hydrological to agricultural drought.
WEATHER AND CLIMATE EXTREMES
(2023)
Article
Agronomy
Lorenzo Villani, Giulio Castelli, Luigi Piemontese, Daniele Penna, Elena Bresci
Summary: Climate change will increase the frequency and severity of drought events in Mediterranean watersheds, calling for urgent action and a shift in drought response strategies. However, the current methodology for drought risk assessment is still debated and hindered by diverse socioecological contexts, spatiotemporal scales, and data availability.
AGRICULTURAL WATER MANAGEMENT
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Oluwafemi E. Adeyeri, Wen Zhou, Patrick Laux, Christopher E. Ndehedehe, Xuan Wang, Muhammad Usman, Akintomide A. Akinsanola
Summary: This study investigates the multimodel global drought monitoring, propagation, and projection using a multivariate standardized drought index (MSDI) during past and future periods. The multivariate bias correction method outperforms other techniques in correcting biases in the models. The study also identifies distinct categories for droughts in different regions and projects changes in drought characteristics for the future.
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Jiacheng Ye, Zhuo Wang
Summary: Many coupled climate models suffer from a late retreat bias in North American monsoon (NAM) simulations, which is manifested by overestimated precipitation in October. The overestimated precipitation has long been attributed to the negative sea surface temperature (SST) biases in the tropical Atlantic and insufficient model resolution to resolve mesoscale features. However, we found little correlation between CMIP6 model resolutions and the simulated NAM retreat-season precipitation in October. Instead, tropical eastern North Pacific SST biases and the associated large-scale circulation biases play a dominant role in inducing the retreat-season biases, with SST biases in other ocean basins playing a secondary role.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Lauren Lynam, Thomas Piechota
Summary: The study evaluated future streamflow in California based on eight climate projection models and found that there may be more severe droughts in the future. Results showed that Warm Dry and Other simulations are projected to have larger droughts, while Average and Cool Wet simulations are projected to have fewer droughts.
Article
Engineering, Civil
Hadush Meresa, Yongqiang Zhang, Jing Tian, Muhammad Abrar Faiz
Summary: Evaluation of peak flood magnitude and frequency in the future at a catchment scale under global warming is crucial for water resource management and flood risk management. This study develops a framework to examine changes and disentangle uncertainties in peak flow, which is tested at five Awash catchments in Ethiopia, a region exposed to extreme flood risk. The results showed that projected extreme precipitation and peak flow magnitude could increase substantially in the coming decades by 30% to 55%.
JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Sisi Chen, Xing Yuan
Summary: Understanding and quantifying drought projection uncertainty at regional scales is crucial for climate adaptations and mitigations. This study combines Single Model Initial-condition Large Ensembles (SMILEs) and CMIP5/CMIP6 GCMs to separate the uncertainty of seasonal soil drought projection over China. The results show that internal variability dominates the uncertainty for short-term drought projection, while model uncertainty exceeds the internal variability uncertainty for long-term projection.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2022)
Article
Physics, Particles & Fields
Anna Pachol, Aneta Wojnar
Summary: We investigate the application of incorporating corrections from the Snyder model and the Generalized Uncertainty Principle into the equation of state to describe the behavior of matter in a low-mass star. The resulting equations exhibit striking similarities to those arising from modified Einstein gravity theories. By modeling matter with realism, we are able to effectively constrain the theory parameters beyond existing astrophysical bounds.
EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL C
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Civil
Simona Denaro, Rosa Cuppari, Jordan D. Kern, Yufei Su, Gregory W. Characklis
Summary: Hydrologic variability can cause significant fluctuations in hydropower generation, leading to volatility in power sales. This poses financial risks for hydropower suppliers, particularly those in hydropower-dominated regions. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) utilizes various strategies to manage its hydrologic financial risk but neglects the medium- and long-term temporal dynamics impacting their financial risk. This study evaluates BPA's financial risk and tests the effectiveness of its current risk management strategy, finding that the financial risk will increase substantially in the next 20 years, highlighting the importance of adequate risk management tools in hydrodominated systems.
JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
(2022)
Article
Economics
Neal Hughes, Wei Ying Soh, Kenton Lawson, Michael Lu
Summary: This paper presents a non-parametric machine learning based micro-simulation model that captures the complex non-linear and farm specific effects of weather and price shocks on profits. The model outperforms conventional methods and demonstrates the increased sensitivity of Australian farm profits to weather risk, particularly drought.
ECONOMIC MODELLING
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Luke Grant, Lukas Gudmundsson, Edouard L. Davin, David M. Lawrence, Nicolas Vuichard, Eddy Robertson, Roland Seferian, Aurelien Ribes, Annette L. Hirsch, Wim Thiery
Summary: Land use changes can affect climates by altering surface fluxes of energy and water. However, observational and model-based studies have inconsistent temperature responses to land use. This study uses a detection and attribution method to assess the historical signal of land use on daily maximum temperatures. The findings show that uncertainties in Earth system model representations of land use are too high to confidently assess its effects.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Frederik Kratzert, Grey Nearing, Nans Addor, Tyler Erickson, Martin Gauch, Oren Gilon, Lukas Gudmundsson, Avinatan Hassidim, Daniel Klotz, Sella Nevo, Guy Shalev, Yossi Matias
Summary: High-quality datasets are crucial for hydrological science and modeling. This paper introduces Caravan, a dataset that standardizes and aggregates seven existing large-sample hydrology datasets. Caravan includes meteorological forcing data, streamflow data, and static catchment attributes for 6830 catchments. It is both a dataset and open-source software, enabling the hydrology community to extend it to new locations by extracting data in the cloud. The vision for Caravan is to democratize the creation and use of globally-standardized large-sample hydrology datasets. It is a truly global open-source community resource.
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
V. Bessenbacher, L. Gudmundsson, S. I. Seneviratne
Summary: Soil moisture plays a crucial role in local land climate. By using virtual soil moisture stations in future CMIP6 projections, a machine-learning-based procedure is applied to inform future station placement. This method outperforms random and geographical distance-based station placement, resulting in a more even global distribution of stations and improved estimation of inter-annual variability and trends in dry-season soil moisture. The results can provide valuable guidance for future station placement to support climate change mitigation efforts.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Laibao Liu, Philippe Ciais, Mengxi Wu, Ryan S. Padron, Pierre Friedlingstein, Jonas Schwaab, Lukas Gudmundsson, Sonia I. Seneviratne
Summary: Terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed 32% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the past six decades, but uncertainties in carbon-climate feedbacks make it difficult to predict future land carbon sink response. Variations in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate (CGR) are dominated by land-atmosphere carbon fluxes in the tropics, and the interannual relationship between water availability and CGR has become increasingly negative in recent decades.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Caspar T. J. Roebroek, Gregory Duveiller, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Edouard L. Davin, Alessandro Cescatti
Summary: Carbon storage in forests serves as a critical means to prevent global warming beyond 1.5 degrees C. Nonetheless, the worldwide impact of forest management, such as harvesting, on carbon balance remains inadequately assessed. Through the integration of global forest biomass, management data, and machine learning, we reveal that a maximum of 44.1 petagrams of carbon could be added to aboveground forest biomass by reducing human intervention, given current climate conditions and CO2 concentration. This would represent a 15 to 16% increase compared to current levels, equivalent to approximately 4 years of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Hence, without substantial emission reductions, this approach offers limited mitigation potential and preserving the forest carbon sink should primarily aim to offset ongoing carbon emissions.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Srinidhi Jha, Lukas Gudmundsson, Sonia I. Seneviratne
Summary: This study comprehensively assesses compound hot and dry extremes under different drought conditions and associated uncertainties. It finds that global warming levels significantly influence the risks of rising compound hot and dry events, with hotspot regions including the Mediterranean, South Central America, Amazonia, and Sahara. The uncertainty in changing likelihoods is contributed by Earth System Models, global warming levels, their interactions, and statistical estimation errors.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera, Evan de Schrijver, Dominik L. Schumacher, Martina S. Ragettli, Erich M. Fischer, Sonia Seneviratne
Summary: Human-induced climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense extreme weather events, which are having a severe impact on population health. The summer of 2022 in Europe experienced exceptionally high temperatures, second only to the infamous summer of 2003. High ambient temperatures are associated with various health outcomes, including premature mortality. However, there is limited quantitative evidence on the contribution of human-induced climate change to the observed heat-related mortality. This study combines climate epidemiology and attribution methods to quantify the heat-related mortality burden attributed to human-induced climate change in Switzerland during the summer of 2022. The findings show that human-induced climate change was a significant driver of the excess health burden observed during that summer.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Plant Sciences
Francesco Giardina, Pierre Gentine, Alexandra G. Konings, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Benjamin D. Stocker
Summary: Accounting for water limitation is crucial in understanding vegetation sensitivity to drought. By training deep neural networks using flux measurements, we identify a water stress factor (fET) that separates evapotranspiration reductions from other covarying drivers. We find a range of evapotranspiration responses to water stress, with the most sensitive responses observed at the most arid and warm sites.
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Yann Quilcaille, Fulden Batibeniz, Andreia F. S. Ribeiro, Ryan S. Padron, Sonia I. Seneviratne
Summary: Human-induced climate change is increasing the incidence of fire events and associated impacts on livelihood, biodiversity, and nature across the world. Understanding current and projected fire activity together with its impacts on ecosystems is crucial for evaluating future risks and taking actions to prevent such devastating events.
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE DATA
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Steven J. De Hertog, Felix Havermann, Inne Vanderkelen, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Dim Coumou, Edouard L. Davin, Gregory Duveiller, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Wim Thiery
Summary: This study simulated the climate effects of land cover and land management change (LCLMC) using three state-of-the-art Earth system models. The results show that deforestation leads to cooling in boreal latitudes and warming in the tropics, while irrigation has a clear cooling effect. These findings contribute to informing decision making regarding future climate consequences of land-based mitigation and adaptation strategies.
EARTH SYSTEM DYNAMICS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Francisco Jose Cuesta-Valero, Hugo Beltrami, Almudena Garcia-Garcia, Gerhard Krinner, Moritz Langer, Andrew H. MacDougall, Jan Nitzbon, Jian Peng, Karina von Schuckmann, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Wim Thiery, Inne Vanderkelen, Tonghua Wu
Summary: Heat storage within the Earth system, including in the land subsurface, inland water bodies, and permafrost, is crucial for understanding climate change. The continental landmasses stored a total of approximately 23.8 x 10(21) J of heat between 1960 and 2020, with the majority being stored in the solid ground. However, the inclusion of inland water bodies and permafrost degradation is justified due to their associated climate phenomena.
EARTH SYSTEM DYNAMICS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Fulden Batibeniz, Mathias Hauser, Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne
Summary: Human-induced climate change is causing an increase in extreme temperature, precipitation, and drought events globally. This study investigates the changes in concurrent extremes under different global warming levels and finds that most individual extreme events become more frequent and affect larger areas for higher warming levels. Concurrent occurrences of heatwaves, droughts, precipitation, and extreme wind become substantially more frequent at higher warming levels. These findings highlight the risks of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.
EARTH SYSTEM DYNAMICS
(2023)
Review
Environmental Sciences
Daniela I. V. Domeisen, Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, Erich M. M. Fischer, Reto Knutti, Sarah E. E. Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Christoph Schar, Sonia I. I. Seneviratne, Antje Weisheimer, Heini Wernli
Summary: Heatwaves pose a major threat to human health and ecosystems, and predicting them is crucial for preparedness. Current capabilities allow for skillful prediction of heatwaves on daily to weekly timescales, but become challenging beyond a few weeks. However, tendencies for above-average temperatures can still be estimated. Future projections suggest that heatwaves will become more frequent, persistent, and intense worldwide, with amplified trends in mid-latitudes due to soil drying. There will also be an increased occurrence of humid heatwaves, particularly in southern Asia. Improving heatwave prediction and projection requires a better understanding of relevant drivers and their model representation.
NATURE REVIEWS EARTH & ENVIRONMENT
(2023)