Projected drought risk in 1.5°C and 2°C warmer climates

Lehner, Flavio; Coats, Sloan; Stocker, Thomas; Pendergrass, Angeline G.; Sanderson, Benjamin M.; Raible, Christoph; Smerdon, Jason E. (2017). Projected drought risk in 1.5°C and 2°C warmer climates. Geophysical Research Letters, 44(14), pp. 7419-7428. American Geophysical Union 10.1002/2017GL074117

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The large socioeconomic costs of droughts make them a crucial target for impact assessments of climate change scenarios. Using multiple drought metrics and a set of simulations with the Community Earth System Model targeting 1.5°C and 2°C above preindustrial global mean temperatures, we investigate changes in aridity and the risk of consecutive drought years. If warming is limited to 2°C, these simulations suggest little change in drought risk for the U.S. Southwest and Central Plains compared to present day. In the Mediterranean and central Europe, however, drought risk increases significantly for both 1.5°C and 2°C warming targets, and the additional 0.5°C of the 2°C climate leads to significantly higher drought risk. Our study suggests that limiting anthropogenic warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C, as aspired to by the Paris Climate Agreement, may have benefits for future drought risk but that such benefits may be regional and in some cases highly uncertain.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Climate and Environmental Physics

UniBE Contributor:

Stocker, Thomas, Raible, Christoph

Subjects:

500 Science > 530 Physics
500 Science > 550 Earth sciences & geology

ISSN:

0094-8276

Publisher:

American Geophysical Union

Language:

English

Submitter:

Monika Wälti-Stampfli

Date Deposited:

11 Apr 2018 10:52

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:08

Publisher DOI:

10.1002/2017GL074117

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.108188

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/108188

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