Droughts affect ecosystems at multiple time scales, but their sub-seasonal legacy effects on vegetation activity remain unclear. Combining the satellite-based enhanced index MODIS EVI with a novel location-specific definition of growing season, we quantify drought impacts and subsequent recovery in Northern Hemisphere. Drought are quantified as changes post-drought greenness sensitivity to clim...

Due to climate change, many lakes in Europe will be subject to higher variability of hydrological characteristics in their littoral zones. These different hydrological regimes might affect the use of allochthonous and autochthonous carbon sources. We used sandy sediment microcosms to examine the effects of different hydrological regimes (wet, desiccating, and wet-desiccation cycles) on carbon t...

Drought has an impact on many aspects of society. To help decision makers reduce the impacts of drought, it is important to improve our understanding of the characteristics and relationships of atmospheric and oceanic parameters that cause drought. In this study, the use of data mining techniques is introduced to find associations between drought and several oceanic and climatic indices that co...

The recent global warming slowdown or hiatus after the big El Niño event in 1997/98 raises the questions of whether terrestrial hydrological cycle is being decelerated and how do the hydrological extremes respond to the hiatus. However, the rapidly developing drought events that are termed as "flash droughts" accompanied by extreme heat, low soil moisture and high evapotranspiration (ET), occur...

Combined effects of climate change and deforestation have altered precipitation patterns in the Amazon. This has led to changes in the frequency of extreme events of flood and drought in recent decades and in the magnitude of the annual flood pulse, a phenomenon that influences virtually all aspects of river-floodplain ecosystem dynamics. Analysis of long-term data revealed abrupt and synchrono...

A natural hazard is a geophysical, atmospheric or hydrological event (e.g., earthquake, landslide, tsunami, windstorm, flood or drought) that has the potential to cause harm or loss, while a natural disaster is the occurrence of an extreme hazardous event that impacts on communities causing damage, disruption and casualties, and leaving the affected communities unable to function normally witho...

Different drought indices often provide different diagnoses of drought severity, making it difficult to determine the best way to evaluate these different drought monitoring results. Additionally, the ability of a newly proposed drought index, the Process-based Accumulated Drought Index (PADI) has not yet been tested in United States. In this study, we quantified the severity of 2012 drought wh...

The English Lowlands is a relatively dry, densely populated region in the south-east of the UK in which water is used intensively. Consequently, parts of the region are water-stressed and face growing water resource pressures. The region is heavily dependent on groundwater and particularly vulnerable to long, multi-annual droughts primarily associated with dry winters. Despite this vulnerabilit...

Although drought impacts on water quantity are widely recognized, the impacts on water quality are less known. The Zayandehrud River basin in the west-central part of Iran plateau witnessed an increased contamination during the recent droughts and low flows. The river has been receiving wastewater and effluents from the villages, a number of small and large industries, and irrigation drainage s...

Drought management depends on indicators to detect drought conditions, and triggers to activate drought responses. But determining those indicators and triggers presents challenges. Indicators often lack spatial and temporal transferability, comparability among scales, and relevance to critical drought impacts. Triggers often lack statistical integrity, consistency among drought categories, and...