Gabriela C. Gesualdo, Marcos R. Benso, Eduardo M. Mendiondo, Manuela I. Brunner
{"title":"Spatially Compounding Drought Events in Brazil","authors":"Gabriela C. Gesualdo, Marcos R. Benso, Eduardo M. Mendiondo, Manuela I. Brunner","doi":"10.1029/2023wr036629","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Spatially compounding drought events affect multiple locations simultaneously, severely affecting food, water, energy, human health, and infrastructure sectors. Despite the cascading impacts and challenges compound droughts impose on society, we still lack an in-depth understanding of spatially connected drought occurrences. Given the complexity and costs of droughts in Brazil, identifying regions prone to co-experiencing droughts is critical for developing effective adaptation measures. Here, we develop a novel framework to assess the spatial co-occurrence of hydrological drought events, which can be adapted for global applications to evaluate spatially compounding drought. This framework involves extracting drought data from individual catchments and calculating the co-occurrence of droughts across all catchments. We apply this method to investigate the spatial connectedness of droughts in 511 Brazilian catchments over 39 years (1983–2022). Additionally, we classify catchments based on drought duration, intensity, deficit, number of events, and spatial connectedness to identify regions with similar drought behavior. Our findings reveal significant variability in drought characteristics and connectedness across Brazil, with the Central-Northeast and Northwest Amazon regions being most affected by multiple and widespread droughts. We identify five distinct regions in Brazil that exhibit common drought behaviors, sharing attributes such as aridity, catchment area, and precipitation seasonality. These regions hold the potential to guide future adaptation plans for managing hydrological compound extremes at both the catchment and regional scales, including the development of risk pool networks. Our results underscore the importance of considering the interactions of spatially compounding hydrological droughts in risk assessments and adaptation strategies.","PeriodicalId":23799,"journal":{"name":"Water Resources Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Water Resources Research","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1029/2023wr036629","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Spatially compounding drought events affect multiple locations simultaneously, severely affecting food, water, energy, human health, and infrastructure sectors. Despite the cascading impacts and challenges compound droughts impose on society, we still lack an in-depth understanding of spatially connected drought occurrences. Given the complexity and costs of droughts in Brazil, identifying regions prone to co-experiencing droughts is critical for developing effective adaptation measures. Here, we develop a novel framework to assess the spatial co-occurrence of hydrological drought events, which can be adapted for global applications to evaluate spatially compounding drought. This framework involves extracting drought data from individual catchments and calculating the co-occurrence of droughts across all catchments. We apply this method to investigate the spatial connectedness of droughts in 511 Brazilian catchments over 39 years (1983–2022). Additionally, we classify catchments based on drought duration, intensity, deficit, number of events, and spatial connectedness to identify regions with similar drought behavior. Our findings reveal significant variability in drought characteristics and connectedness across Brazil, with the Central-Northeast and Northwest Amazon regions being most affected by multiple and widespread droughts. We identify five distinct regions in Brazil that exhibit common drought behaviors, sharing attributes such as aridity, catchment area, and precipitation seasonality. These regions hold the potential to guide future adaptation plans for managing hydrological compound extremes at both the catchment and regional scales, including the development of risk pool networks. Our results underscore the importance of considering the interactions of spatially compounding hydrological droughts in risk assessments and adaptation strategies.
期刊介绍:
Water Resources Research (WRR) is an interdisciplinary journal that focuses on hydrology and water resources. It publishes original research in the natural and social sciences of water. It emphasizes the role of water in the Earth system, including physical, chemical, biological, and ecological processes in water resources research and management, including social, policy, and public health implications. It encompasses observational, experimental, theoretical, analytical, numerical, and data-driven approaches that advance the science of water and its management. Submissions are evaluated for their novelty, accuracy, significance, and broader implications of the findings.