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Global Meteorological Drought: A Synthesis of Current Understanding with a Focus on SST Drivers of Precipitation Deficits
- Source :
- Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- American Meteorological Society, 2016.
-
Abstract
- Drought affects virtually every region of the world, and potential shifts in its character in a changing climate are a major concern. This article presents a synthesis of current understanding of meteorological drought, with a focus on the large-scale controls on precipitation afforded by sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, land surface feedbacks, and radiative forcings. The synthesis is primarily based on regionally focused articles submitted to the Global Drought Information System (GDIS) collection together with new results from a suite of atmospheric general circulation model experiments intended to integrate those studies into a coherent view of drought worldwide. On interannual time scales, the preeminence of ENSO as a driver of meteorological drought throughout much of the Americas, eastern Asia, Australia, and the Maritime Continent is now well established, whereas in other regions (e.g., Europe, Africa, and India), the response to ENSO is more ephemeral or nonexistent. Northern Eurasia, central Europe, and central and eastern Canada stand out as regions with few SST-forced impacts on precipitation on interannual time scales. Decadal changes in SST appear to be a major factor in the occurrence of long-term drought, as highlighted by apparent impacts on precipitation of the late 1990s “climate shifts” in the Pacific and Atlantic SST. Key remaining research challenges include (i) better quantification of unforced and forced atmospheric variability as well as land–atmosphere feedbacks, (ii) better understanding of the physical basis for the leading modes of climate variability and their predictability, and (iii) quantification of the relative contributions of internal decadal SST variability and forced climate change to long-term drought.<br />The various contributions to this paper were made possible by the support of the host organizations of the coauthors, as noted in the acknowledgments of the contributing Global Drought Information System (GDIS) special collection papers. The GDIS effort is sponsored and supported by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP: CLIVAR andGEWEX) and various partner organizations including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the U.S. CLIVAR program, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the European Commission JointResearch Centre (JRC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the European Space Agency (ESA)–European Space Research Institute (ESRIN). Support for the overall development of this synthesis article was provided by NASA’sModeling, Analysis and Prediction Program. The GLDAS-2 data used in this study were acquired as part of the mission of NASA’s Earth Science Division and archived and distributed by the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC).
- Subjects :
- Atmospheric Science
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
0208 environmental biotechnology
Sea surface temperature
Climate change
02 engineering and technology
Precipitation
Decadal variability
Atmospheric sciences
01 natural sciences
Atmosphere
Interannual variability
East Asia
Predictability
Variability
Climate variability
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Atm/Ocean Structure/ Phenomena
Drought
Ephemeral key
020801 environmental engineering
Current (stream)
Climatology
Environmental science
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....b237b009cfd202712690cf1bb452581d