Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Past and Future Global Drought Assessment

  • Published:
Water Resources Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Understanding the climate change impacts on drought occurrence is of great importance for comprehensive water resources management. Reconnaissance drought index (RDI) considers, in addition to precipitation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), which is a vital parameter to detect droughts under climate change. RDI is first applied to global land precipitation and PET data during 1959–2018. The annual drought trend analysis reveals while around 79% of the world’s lands present no significant drought trend, approximately 13 and 8% are getting drier and wetter, respectively. Therefore, the area of drying zone is larger than that of wetting zone. Seasonal drought trend analysis presents contradictory tendencies. Spring (MAM) and summer (JJA) indicate a drying trend. Conversely, fall (SON) and winter (DJF) present a wetting tendency. Climate projections of 16 global climate models (GCMs) from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) under RCP8.5 scenario are used to assess future drought during 2006–2055. PET is estimated using Penman–Monteith model. The results obtained from all the applied GCMs suggest that the areal extent of RDI downward trend (shifting to more arid) is larger than that of more wetness tendency. Average of the area percentages presented by the 16 GCMs indicates while the area of drying zone is almost the same with that of the past period with 13%, the wetting zone in the future with 5% is smaller than that of past with 8%. Therefore, the observed drying trend in the past period will continue during the future period.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adeniyi MO (2016) The consequences of the IPCC AR5 RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 climate change scenarios on precipitation in West Africa. Clim Change 139:245–263

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allen RG, Pereira LS, Raes D, Smith M (1998) Crop evapotranspiration. FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome

  • Asadi Zarch MA, Malekinezhad H, Mobin MH, Dastorani MT, Kousari MR (2011) Drought Monitoring by Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) in Iran. Water Resour Manage 25:3485–3504

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asadi Zarch MA, Sivakumar B, Malekinezhad H, Sharma A (2017) Future aridity under conditions of global climate change. J Hydrol 554:451–469

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asadi Zarch MA, Sivakumar B, Sharma A (2015) Droughts in a warming climate: A global assessment of Standardized precipitation index (SPI) and Reconnaissance drought index (RDI). J Hydrol 526:183–195

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Banimahd SA, Khalili D (2013) Factors Influencing Markov Chains Predictability Characteristics, Utilizing SPI, RDI, EDI and SPEI Drought Indices in Different Climatic Zones. Water Resour Manage 27:3911–3928

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buras A, Rammig A, Zang CS (2020) Quantifying impacts of the 2018 drought on European ecosystems in comparison to 2003. Biogeosciences 17:1655–1672

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chattopadhyay S, Edwards DR, Yu Y, Hamidisepehr A (2017) An Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Future Water Availability and Droughts in the Kentucky River Basin. Environ Process 4:477–507

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen J, Dai A, Zhang Y (2019) Projected changes in daily variability and seasonal cycle of near-surface air temperature over the globe during the Twenty-First century. J Clim 32:8537–8561

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng Q, Gao L, Zhong F, Zuo X, Ma M (2020) Spatiotemporal variations of drought in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, southwest China, during 1960–2013 and their association with large-scale circulations and historical records. Ecol Indic 112:106041

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choudhury A, Dutta D, Bera D, Kundu A (2021) Regional variation of drought parameters and long-term trends over India using standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Environ Manage 296:113056

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dai AG (2012) Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models. Nat Clim Change 3:52–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diaz V, Corzo Perez GA, Van Lanen HAJ, Solomatine D, Varouchakis EA (2020) Characterisation of the dynamics of past droughts. Sci Total Environ 718:134588

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flato GJ, Marotzke B, Abiodun P, Braconnot SC, Chou W, Collins P, Cox F, Driouech S, Emori V, Eyring C, Forest P, Gleckler E, Guilyardi C, Jakob V, Kattsov CR, Rummukainen M (2013) Evaluation of climate Models. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA

  • Gebrechorkos SH, Hülsmann S, Bernhofer C (2020) Analysis of climate variability and droughts in East Africa using high-resolution climate data products. Glob Planet Change 186:103130

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gettelman A, Rood RB (2016) Bringing the System Together: Coupling and Complexity. In: Demystifying Climate Models. Earth Systems Data and Models, vol 2. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Gu L, Chen J, Xu CY, Kim JS, Chen H, Xia J, Zhang L (2019) The contribution of internal climate variability to climate change impacts on droughts. Sci Total Environ 684:229–246

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gu L, Chen J, Yin J, Sullivan SC, Wang H-M, Guo S, Zhang L, Kim J-S (2020) Projected increases in magnitude and socioeconomic exposure of global droughts in 1.5 and 2 °C warmer climates. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci 24:451–472

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Güçlü YS (2020) Improved visualization for trend analysis by comparing with classical Mann-Kendall test and ITA. J Hydrol 584:124674

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanel M, Rakovec O, Markonis Y, Máca P, Samaniego L, Kyselý J, Kumar R (2018) Revisiting the recent European droughts from a long-term perspective. Sci Rep 8:9499

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris I, Jones PD, Osborn TJ, Lister DH (2014) Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations – the CRU TS3.10 Dataset. Int J Climatol 34:623–642

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris I, Osborn TJ, Jones P, Lister D (2020) Version 4 of the CRU TS monthly high-resolution gridded multivariate climate dataset. Sci Data 7:109

  • Huang S, Li P, Huang Q, Leng G, Hou B, Ma L (2017) The propagation from meteorological to hydrological drought and its potential influence factors. J Hydrol 547:184–195

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jabloun M, Sahli A (2008) Evaluation of FAO-56 methodology for estimating reference evapotranspiration using limited climatic data application to Tunisia. Agric Water Manage 95:707–715

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jehanzaib M, Sattar MN, Lee J, Kim TW (2020) Investigating effect of climate change on drought propagation from meteorological to hydrological drought using multi-model ensemble projections. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 34:7–21

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jebeile J, Crucifix M (2020) Multi-model ensembles in climate science: Mathematical structures and expert judgments. Stud Hist Philos Sci A 83:44–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones PD, Harris I (2013) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) time-series datasets of variations in climate with variations in other phenomena. NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre, University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). See http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/cru/

  • Jose DM, Vincent AM, Dwarakish GS (2022) Improving multiple model ensemble predictions of daily precipitation and temperature through machine learning techniques. Sci Rep 12:4678

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kendall MG (1975) Rank Correlation Methods. Griffin, London, UK

    Google Scholar 

  • Knutti R, Furrer R, Tebaldi C, Cermak J, Meehl GA (2010) Challenges in combining projections from multiple climate models. J Clim 23(10):2739–2758

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li R, Ma X, Xiong F, Jia H, Sha T, Tian R (2020) Comparisons and evaluation of aerosol burden and optical depth in CMIP5 simulations over East Asia. J Atmos Sol Terr Phys 206:105315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu W, Sun F, Lim WH, Zhang J, Wang H, Shiogama H, Zhang Y (2018) Global drought and severe drought-affected populations in 1.5 and 2 °C warmer worlds. Earth Syst Dynam 9:267–283

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric tests against trend. Econometrica 13:245–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391(1–2):202–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nemati A, Najafabadi SHG, Joodaki G, Mousavi Nadoushani SS (2020) Spatiotemporal Drought Characterization Using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) in the Central Plateau Catchment of Iran. Environ Process 7:135–157

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Noël T, Loukos H, Defrance D, Vrac M, Levavasseur G (2021) A high-resolution downscaled CMIP5 projections dataset of essential surface climate variables over the globe coherent with the ERA5 reanalysis for climate change impact assessments. Data Brief 35:106900

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ortiz-Gómez R, Flowers-Cano RS, Medina-García G (2022) Sensitivity of the RDI and SPEI Drought Indices to Different Models for Estimating Evapotranspiration Potential in Semiarid Regions. Water Resour Manage 36:2471–2492

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oroud IM (2018) Global Warming and its Implications on Meteorological and Hydrological Drought in the Southeastern Mediterranean. Environ Process 5:329–348

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Páscoa PC, Gouveia M, Russo A, Trigo RM (2017) Drought trends in the Iberian Peninsula over the Last 112 Years. Adv Meteorol 2017:4653126

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rani S, Sreekesh S (2019) Evaluating the Responses of Streamflow under Future Climate Change Scenarios in a Western Indian Himalaya Watershed. Environ Process 6:155–174

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riahi K, Rao S, Krey V, Cho CH, Chirkov V, Fischer G, Kindermann G, Nakicenovic N, Rafaj P (2011) RCP 8.5—a scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions. Clim Change 109:33–57

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shi H, Li T, Wei J (2017) Evaluation of the gridded CRU TS precipitation dataset with the point raingauge records over the Three-River Headwaters Region. J Hydrol 548:322–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silva RM, Santos CAG, Moreira M, Corte-Real J, Silva VCL, Medeiros IC (2015) Rainfall and river flow trends using Mann-Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator statistical trends in the Cobres River basin. Nat Hazards 77:1205–1221

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Kordalis N, Tigkas D, Tsakiris V, Vangelis H (2016) Analysing Drought Severity and Areal Extent by 2D Archimedean Copulas. Water Resour Manage 30:5723–5735

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Nalbantis I, Pangalou D, Tigkas D, Vangelis H (2008) Drought meteorological monitoring network design for the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI). 1st International Conference “Drought Management: Scientific and Technological Innovations”. Zaragoza, Spain.12–14 June 2008. pp. 57–62

  • Tsakiris G, Pangalou D, Vangelis H (2007) Regional drought assessment based on the reconnaissance drought index (RDI). Water Resour Manage 21(5):821–833

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris G, Vangelis H (2005) Establishing a drought index incorporating evapotranspiration. Eur Water 9(10):3–11

  • Ullah H, Akbar M (2021) Drought Risk Analysis for Water Assessment at Gauged and Ungauged Sites in the Low Rainfall Regions of Pakistan. Environ Process 8:139–162

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Vuuren DP, Edmonds JA, Kainuma M, Riahi K, Thomson AM, Hibbard K, Hurtt GC, Kram T, Krey V, Lamarque JF, Masui T, Meinshausen M, Nakicenovic N, Smith SJ, Rose S (2011) The representative concentration pathways: an overview. Clim Change 109:5–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wan W, Zhao J, Li HY, Mishra A, Hejazi M, Lu H, Demissie Y, Wang H (2017) A holistic view of water management impacts on future droughts: a global multimodel analysis. J Geophys Res Atmos 123(11):5947–5972

  • Zarei AR (2018) Evaluation of Drought Condition in Arid and Semi- Arid Regions, Using RDI Index. Water Resour Manage 32:1689–1711

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zarei AR, Mahmoudi MR, Shabani A (2021) Using the Fuzzy Clustering and Principle Component Analysis for Assessing the Impact of Potential Evapotranspiration Calculation Method On the Modified RDI Index. Water Resour Manage 35:3679–3702

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhai Y, Huang G, Wang X et al (2019) Future projections of temperature changes in Ottawa, Canada through stepwise clustered downscaling of multiple GCMs under RCPs. Clim Dyn 52:3455–3470

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang S, Wu Y, Bellie S, Mu X, Zhao F, Sun P et al (2019) Climate change-induced drought evolution over the past 50 years in the southern Chinese Loess Plateau. Environ Model Softw 122:104519

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao M, Huang S, Huang Q, Wang H, Leng G, Xie Y (2019) Assessing socio-economic drought evolution characteristics and their possible meteorological driving force. Geomatics Nat Hazards Risk 10(1):1084–1101

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

The author declares that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Natural Resources and Desert Studies, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

    Mohammad Amin Asadi Zarch

Authors
  1. Mohammad Amin Asadi Zarch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis and investigation, and Writing: MA Asadi Zarch.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohammad Amin Asadi Zarch.

Ethics declarations

Ethical Approval

The author confirms that this article is original research and has not been published or presented previously in any journal or conference in any language (in whole or in part).

Competing Interests

The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Consent to Participate

The author declares that he is aware and consent with his participation on this paper.

Consent to Publish

The author declares that he is consent with the publication of this paper.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Asadi Zarch, M.A. Past and Future Global Drought Assessment. Water Resour Manage 36, 5259–5276 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-022-03304-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-022-03304-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation