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Implications of Global Warming for Climate Variability and the Occurrence of Extreme Climate Events

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Drought Assessment, Management, and Planning: Theory and Case Studies

Part of the book series: Natural Resource Management and Policy ((NRMP,volume 2))

Abstract

Drought is undoubtedly the best-studied extreme climatic event. As an extreme event, changes in its frequency for any given location are affected by changes in mean conditions of climate (including, among other climate variables, temperature and precipitation) as well as the variability (on different time scales) of climate and other higher-order statistical moments (Mearns et al., 1984; Wigley, 1985; Wigley, 1988). It has recently been demonstrated (Katz and Brown, 1992) that changes in the frequencies of extreme events (e.g., the occurrence of maximum temperatures above 35°C) are more sensitive to variability (i.e., standard deviation) changes than to mean changes in a climate element. This relative high sensitivity to variability should also obtain for more complex extreme events that are functions of several climate variables. Drought is an unusually complex extreme event. It is something of a creeping phenomenon; neither its onset nor its end is clearly punctuated in time. It is difficult to measure drought severity, since drought is a combination of factors such as duration, intensity, and areal extent. In addition, different types of drought are recognized, such as meteorological drought, agricultural drought, and hydrologic drought.

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  1. Linda O. Mearns
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Donald A. Wilhite

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Mearns, L.O. (1993). Implications of Global Warming for Climate Variability and the Occurrence of Extreme Climate Events. In: Wilhite, D.A. (eds) Drought Assessment, Management, and Planning: Theory and Case Studies. Natural Resource Management and Policy, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3224-8_7

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