Abstract
The effects of future temperature and hence evapotranspiration increases on drought risk over North America, based on ten current (1970–1999) and ten corresponding future (2040–2069) Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations from the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program, are presented in this study. The ten pairs of simulations considered in this study are based on six RCMs and four driving Atmosphere Ocean Coupled Global Climate Models. The effects of temperature and evapotranspiration on drought risks are assessed by comparing characteristics of drought events identified on the basis of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspration Index (SPEI). The former index uses only precipitation, while the latter uses the difference (DIF) between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) as input variables. As short- and long-term droughts impact various sectors differently, multi-scale (ranging from 1- to 12-month) drought events are considered. The projected increase in mean temperature by more than 2 °C in the future period compared to the current period for most parts of North America results in large increases in PET and decreases in DIF for the future period, especially for low latitude regions of North America. These changes result in large increases in future drought risks for most parts of the USA and southern Canada. Though similar results are obtained with SPI, the projected increases in the drought characteristics such as severity and duration and the spatial extent of regions susceptible to drought risks in the future are considerably larger in the case of SPEI-based analysis. Both approaches suggest that long-term and extreme drought events are affected more by the future increases in temperature and PET than short-term and moderate drought events, particularly over the high drought risk regions of North America.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bowman AW, Azzalini A (1997) Applied smoothing techniques for data analysis. Oxford University Press, London
Caya D, Laprise R (1999) A semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian regional climate model: The Canadian RCM. Mon Weather Rev 127:341–341
Christensen JH, Hewitson B, Busuioc A et al (2007) Regional climate projections. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Collins WD et al (2006) The Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3). J Clim 19:2122–2143
Collins M, Knutti R, Arblaster J, Dufresne J-L, Fichefet T, Friedlingstein P, Gao X, Gutowski WJ, Johns T, Krinner G, Shongwe M, Tebaldi C, Weaver AJ, Wehner M (2013) Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility. In: Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM (eds) 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
Dai A (2011) Drought under global warming: a review. WIREs Clim Chang 2:45–65
FEMA (1995) National mitigation strategy: partnerships for building safer communities. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC
Flato GM (2005) The Third Generation Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM3). Available online from http://www.ec.gc.ca/ccmac-cccma/default.asp?n=1299529F-1
GFDL GAMDT (The GFDL Global Model Development Team) (2004) The new GFDL global atmospheric and land model AM2-LM2: evaluation with prescribed SST simulations. J Clim 17:4641–4673
Gordon C et al (2000) The simulation of SST, sea ice extents and ocean heat transports in a version of the Hadley Centre coupled model without flux adjustments. Clim Dyn 16:147–168
Grell GA, Devenyi D (2002) A generalized approach to parameterizing convection combining ensemble and data assimilation techniques. Geophys Res Lett 29:1693–1697
Grell GA, Dudhia J, Stauffer DR (1993) A description of the fifth-generation Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5). NCAR Tech. Note NCAR/TN-398+1A, 107 pp
Hamon WR (1961) Estimating potential evapotranspiration. J Hydraul Div Proc Am Soc Civil Eng 87:107–120
Heim RR (2002) A review of twentieth-century drought indices used in the United States. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 83:1149–1165
Hoerling MP, Eischeid JK, Quan X-W, Diaz HF, Webb RS, Dole RM, Easterling DR (2012) Is a transition to semipermanent drought conditions imminent in the U.S. Great Plains? J Clim 25:8380–8386
IPCC (2012) In: Field CB, Barros V, Stocker TF, Qin D, Dokken DJ, Ebi KL, Mastrandrea MD, Mach KJ, Plattner G-K, Allen SK, Tignor M, Midgley PM (eds) Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 582 pp
IPCC (2013) Annex I: Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections. In: van Oldenborgh GJ, Collins M, Arblaster J, Christensen JH, Marotzke J, Power SB, Rummukainen M, Zhou T (eds.). In: Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G-K, Tignor M, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM (eds.) 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
Jones RG, Hassell DC, Hudson D, Wilson SS, Jenkins GJ, Mitchell JFB (2003) Workbook on generating high resolution climate change scenarios using PRECIS. UNDP, 32 pp
Juang H-M, Hong S-Y, Kanamitsu M (1997) The NCEP regional spectral model: an update. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 78:2125–2143
Lu JB, Sun G, McNulty SG, Amatya DM (2005) A comparison of six potential evapotranspiration methods for regional use in the southeastern United States. J Am Water Resour Assoc 41:621–633
Massey FJ (1951) The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for goodness of fit. J Am Stat Assoc 46:68–78
McKee TB, Doesken NJ, Kleist J (1993) The relationship of drought frequency and duration to time scales. In Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Applied Climatology, Anaheim, CA, January 17-23, 1993. American Meteorological Society. Boston, MA, pp. 179–184
Mearns LO et al (2012) The North American regional climate change assessment program: overview of phase I results. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 93:1337–1362
Meehl GA, Stocker TF, Collins WD et al (2007) Global climate projections. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Mishra AK, Singh VP (2010) A review of drought concepts. J Hydrol 391:202–216
Nakicenovic N, Alcamo J, Davis G et al (2000) Special report on emission scenarios. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 599 pp
Pal JS et al (2007) Regional climate modeling for the developing world: The ICTP RegCM3 and RegCNET. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 88:1395–1409
Parzen E (1962) On estimation of a probability density function and mode. Ann Math Stat 33:1065–1076
Pope VD et al (2000) The impact of new physical parameterizations in the Hadley Centre climate model: HadAM3. Clim Dyn 16:123–146
Santos JF, Portela MM, Pulido-Calvo I (2011) Regional frequency analysis of drought in Portugal. Water Resour Manag 25:3537–3558
Sheffield J, Wood EF (2008) Projected changes in drought occurrence under future global warming from multi-model, multi-scenario, IPCC AR4 simulations. Clim Dyn 31:79–105
Sheffield J, Wood EF, Roderick ML (2012) Little change in global drought over the past 60 years. Nature 491:435–438
Strzepek K, Yohe G. Neumann J, Boehlert B (2010) Characterizing changes in drought risk for the United States from climate change. Environ Res Lett 5(4). doi: 10.1088/1748‐9326/5/4/044012
Trnka M, Kersebaum KC, Eitzinger J, Hayes M, Hlavinka P, Svoboda M, Dubrovský M, Semerádová D, Wardlow B, Pokorný E, Možný M, Wilhite D, Žalud Z (2013) Consequences of climate change for the soil climate in Central Europe and the central plains of the United States. Clim Chang 120:405–418
Vicente-Serrano SM, Beguería S, López-Moreno JI (2010) A multiscalar drought index sensitive to global warming: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index. J Clim 23:1696–1718
Wilhite DA (2010) Drought as a natural hazard: concepts and definitions (Chapter 1). In: Wilhite DA, Keller AZ (eds) Drought: a global assessment. Hazards and disasters: a series of definitive major works. Routledge Publishers, London
Winter TC, Rosenberry DO, Sturrock AM (1995) Evaluation of 11 equations for determining evaporation for a small lake in the north central United States. Water Resour Res 31(40):983–993
Zarch MAA, Malekinezhad H, Mobin MH, Dastorani MT, Kousari MR (2011) Drought monitoring by Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) in Iran. Water Resour Manag 25(13):3485–3504
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) for providing the data used in this paper. This research was funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Ouranos Consortium and HydroQuebec. The authors would like to thank three anonymous referees for their very helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jeong, D.I., Sushama, L. & Naveed Khaliq, M. The role of temperature in drought projections over North America. Climatic Change 127, 289–303 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1248-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1248-3