IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v14y2023i1d10.1038_s41467-022-35531-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Global droughts connected by linkages between drought hubs

Author

Listed:
  • Somnath Mondal

    (Clemson University)

  • Ashok K. Mishra

    (Clemson University)

  • Ruby Leung

    (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

  • Benjamin Cook

    (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
    Columbia University)

Abstract

Quantifying the spatial and interconnected structure of regional to continental scale droughts is one of the unsolved global hydrology problems, which is important for understanding the looming risk of mega-scale droughts and the resulting water and food scarcity and their cascading impact on the worldwide economy. Using a Complex Network analysis, this study explores the topological characteristics of global drought events based on the self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index. Event Synchronization is used to measure the strength of association between the onset of droughts at different spatial locations within the time lag of 1-3 months. The network coefficients derived from the synchronization network indicate a highly heterogeneous connectivity structure underlying global drought events. Drought hotspot regions such as Southern Europe, Northeast Brazil, Australia, and Northwest USA behave as drought hubs that synchronize regionally and with other hubs at inter-continental or even inter-hemispheric scale. This observed affinity among drought hubs is equivalent to the ‘rich-club phenomenon’ in Network Theory, where ‘rich’ nodes (here, drought hubs) are tightly interconnected to form a club, implicating the possibility of simultaneous large-scale droughts over multiple continents.

Suggested Citation

  • Somnath Mondal & Ashok K. Mishra & Ruby Leung & Benjamin Cook, 2023. "Global droughts connected by linkages between drought hubs," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-35531-8
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35531-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35531-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-022-35531-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duncan J. Watts & Steven H. Strogatz, 1998. "Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks," Nature, Nature, vol. 393(6684), pages 440-442, June.
    2. Mariya Y. Omelicheva, 2011. "Natural Disasters: Triggers of Political Instability?," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 441-465, October.
    3. Aiguo Dai, 2011. "Drought under global warming: a review," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(1), pages 45-65, January.
    4. Tsonis, A.A. & Roebber, P.J., 2004. "The architecture of the climate network," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 333(C), pages 497-504.
    5. Peer Nowack & Jakob Runge & Veronika Eyring & Joanna D. Haigh, 2020. "Causal networks for climate model evaluation and constrained projections," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 11(1), pages 1-11, December.
    6. Aiguo Dai, 2013. "Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 52-58, January.
    7. Aiguo Dai, 2013. "Erratum: Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(2), pages 171-171, February.
    8. Guillermo N. Murray-Tortarolo & Mario Martínez Salgado, 2021. "Drought as a driver of Mexico-US migration," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-11, February.
    9. Niklas Boers & Bedartha Goswami & Aljoscha Rheinwalt & Bodo Bookhagen & Brian Hoskins & Jürgen Kurths, 2019. "Complex networks reveal global pattern of extreme-rainfall teleconnections," Nature, Nature, vol. 566(7744), pages 373-377, February.
    10. Fernando Oñate-Valdivieso & Veronica Uchuari & Arianna Oñate-Paladines, 2020. "Large-Scale Climate Variability Patterns and Drought: A Case of Study in South – America," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 34(6), pages 2061-2079, April.
    11. Franziska Gaupp & Jim Hall & Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler & Simon Dadson, 2020. "Changing risks of simultaneous global breadbasket failure," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 54-57, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fenying Cai & Caihong Liu & Dieter Gerten & Song Yang & Tuantuan Zhang & Kaiwen Li & Jürgen Kurths, 2024. "Sketching the spatial disparities in heatwave trends by changing atmospheric teleconnections in the Northern Hemisphere," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ashenafi Yimam Kassaye & Guangcheng Shao & Xiaojun Wang & Shiqing Wu, 2021. "Quantification of drought severity change in Ethiopia during 1952–2017," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 5096-5121, April.
    2. Guga, Suri & Ma, Yining & Riao, Dao & Zhi, Feng & Xu, Jie & Zhang, Jiquan, 2023. "Drought monitoring of sugarcane and dynamic variation characteristics under global warming: A case study of Guangxi, China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    3. Jun Li & Yao Zhang & Emanuele Bevacqua & Jakob Zscheischler & Trevor F. Keenan & Xu Lian & Sha Zhou & Hongying Zhang & Mingzhu He & Shilong Piao, 2024. "Future increase in compound soil drought-heat extremes exacerbated by vegetation greening," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Li, Su-Yuan & Miao, Li-Juan & Jiang, Zhi-Hong & Wang, Guo-Jie & Gnyawali, Kaushal Raj & Zhang, Jing & Zhang, Hui & Fang, Ke & He, Yu & Li, Chun, 2020. "Projected drought conditions in Northwest China with CMIP6 models under combined SSPs and RCPs for 2015–2099," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 11(3), pages 210-217.
    5. Jianzhi Dong & Fangni Lei & Wade T. Crow, 2022. "Land transpiration-evaporation partitioning errors responsible for modeled summertime warm bias in the central United States," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    6. Xu, Zhenheng & Sun, Hao & Zhang, Tian & Xu, Huanyu & Wu, Dan & Gao, JinHua, 2023. "Evaluating established deep learning methods in constructing integrated remote sensing drought index: A case study in China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 286(C).
    7. Huynh, Thanh D. & Nguyen, Thu Ha & Truong, Cameron, 2020. "Climate risk: The price of drought," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    8. Jale Amanuel Dufera & Tewodros Addisu Yate & Tadesse Tujuba Kenea, 2023. "Spatiotemporal analysis of drought in Oromia regional state of Ethiopia over the period 1989 to 2019," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 117(2), pages 1569-1609, June.
    9. Jinhua Wen & Yian Hua & Chenkai Cai & Shiwu Wang & Helong Wang & Xinyan Zhou & Jian Huang & Jianqun Wang, 2023. "Probabilistic Forecast and Risk Assessment of Flash Droughts Based on Numeric Weather Forecast: A Case Study in Zhejiang, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-20, February.
    10. Gilles Dufrénot & William Ginn & Marc Pourroy, 2023. "ENSO Climate Patterns on Global Economic Conditions," AMSE Working Papers 2308, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    11. Dingcai Yin & Xiaohua Gou & Haijiang Yang & Kai Wang & Jie Liu & Yiran Zhang & Linlin Gao, 2023. "Elevation-dependent tree growth response to recent warming and drought on eastern Tibetan Plateau," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 176(6), pages 1-18, June.
    12. Leto Peel & Tiago P. Peixoto & Manlio De Domenico, 2022. "Statistical inference links data and theory in network science," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-15, December.
    13. Adeline Bichet & Arona Diedhiou & Benoit Hingray & Guillaume Evin & N’Datchoh Evelyne Touré & Klutse Nana Ama Browne & Kouakou Kouadio, 2020. "Assessing uncertainties in the regional projections of precipitation in CORDEX-AFRICA," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 583-601, September.
    14. Trnka, Miroslav & Vizina, Adam & Hanel, Martin & Balek, Jan & Fischer, Milan & Hlavinka, Petr & Semerádová, Daniela & Štěpánek, Petr & Zahradníček, Pavel & Skalák, Petr & Eitzinger, Josef & Dubrovský,, 2022. "Increasing available water capacity as a factor for increasing drought resilience or potential conflict over water resources under present and future climate conditions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    15. Yu, Chaoqing & Huang, Xiao & Chen, Han & Huang, Guorui & Ni, Shaoqiang & Wright, Jonathon S. & Hall, Jim & Ciais, Philippe & Zhang, Jie & Xiao, Yuchen & Sun, Zhanli & Wang, Xuhui & Yu, Le, 2018. "Assessing the impacts of extreme agricultural droughts in China under climate and socioeconomic changes," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 6, pages 689-703.
    16. Ding, Yugang & Xu, Jiangmin, 2023. "Global vulnerability of agricultural commodities to climate risk: Evidence from satellite data," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 669-687.
    17. Weili Duan & Bin He & Daniel Nover & Jingli Fan & Guishan Yang & Wen Chen & Huifang Meng & Chuanming Liu, 2016. "Floods and associated socioeconomic damages in China over the last century," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 82(1), pages 401-413, May.
    18. Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano & Miquel Tomas-Burguera & Santiago Beguería & Fergus Reig & Borja Latorre & Marina Peña-Gallardo & M. Yolanda Luna & Ana Morata & José C. González-Hidalgo, 2017. "A High Resolution Dataset of Drought Indices for Spain," Data, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-10, June.
    19. Jinquan Li & Junmin Pei & Changming Fang & Bo Li & Ming Nie, 2024. "Drought may exacerbate dryland soil inorganic carbon loss under warming climate conditions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    20. Zefeng Chen & Weiguang Wang & Giovanni Forzieri & Alessandro Cescatti, 2024. "Transition from positive to negative indirect CO2 effects on the vegetation carbon uptake," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-35531-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.