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A quantitative evaluation of the issue of drought definition: a source of disagreement in future drought assessments

Satoh Yusuke, Shiogama, Hideo, Hanasaki Naota, Pokhrel, Yadu, Boulange Julien, Burek Peter, Gosling Simon N., Gryllakis Emmanouil, Koutroulis Aristeidis, Müller Schmied Hannes, Thiery Wim, Yokohata Tokuta

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URIhttp://purl.tuc.gr/dl/dias/28C53796-D629-400B-8AC0-282F8EF93E82-
Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2348-
Identifierhttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2348-
Languageen-
Extent13 pagesen
TitleA quantitative evaluation of the issue of drought definition: a source of disagreement in future drought assessmentsen
CreatorSatoh Yusukeen
CreatorShiogama, Hideoen
CreatorHanasaki Naotaen
CreatorPokhrel, Yaduen
CreatorBoulange Julienen
CreatorBurek Peteren
CreatorGosling Simon N.en
CreatorGryllakis Emmanouilen
CreatorΓρυλλακης Εμμανουηλel
CreatorKoutroulis Aristeidisen
CreatorΚουτρουλης Αριστειδηςel
CreatorMüller Schmied Hannesen
CreatorThiery Wimen
CreatorYokohata Tokutaen
PublisherIOP Publishingen
Content SummaryDroughts are anticipated to intensify in many parts of the world due to climate change. However, the issue of drought definition, namely the diversity of drought indices, makes it difficult to compare drought assessments. This issue is widely known, but its relative importance has never been quantitatively evaluated in comparison to other sources of uncertainty. Here, encompassing three drought categories (meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological droughts) with four temporal scales of interest, we evaluated changes in the drought frequency using multi-model and multi-scenario simulations to identify areas where the definition issue could result in pronounced uncertainties and to what extent. We investigated the disagreement in the signs of changes between drought definitions and decomposed the variance into four main factors: drought definitions, greenhouse gas concentration scenarios, global climate models, and global water models, as well as their interactions. The results show that models were the primary sources of variance over 82% of the global land area. On the other hand, the drought definition was the dominant source of variance in the remaining 17%, especially in parts of northern high-latitudes. Our results highlight specific regions where differences in drought definitions result in a large spread among projections, including areas showing opposite signs of significant changes. At a global scale, 7% of the variance resulted independently from the definition issue, and that value increased to 44% when 1st and 2nd order interactions were considered. The quantitative results suggest that by clarifying hydrological processes or sectors of interest, one could avoid these uncertainties in drought assessments to obtain a clearer picture of future drought change.en
Type of ItemΕπιστολήel
Type of ItemLetteren
Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
Date of Item2023-02-17-
Date of Publication2021-
SubjectDrought projectionsen
SubjectUncertaintyen
SubjectThe issue of drought definitionen
SubjectSources of uncertaintyen
SubjectANOVAen
Bibliographic CitationY. Satoh, H. Shiogama, N. Hanasaki, Y. Pokhrel, J. E. S. Boulange, P. Burek, S. N. Gosling, M. Grillakis, A. Koutroulis, H. Müller Schmied, W. Thiery, and T. Yokohata, “A quantitative evaluation of the issue of drought definition: a source of disagreement in future drought assessments,” Environ. Res. Lett., vol. 16, no. 10, Sep. 2021, doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2348.en

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