[1] We used a simulated data set of hydro-climatological variables to examine for 20th century trends in soil moisture, runoff, and drought characteristics over the conterminous United States (U.S.). An increasing trend is apparent in both model soil moisture and runoff over much of the U.S., with a few decreasing trends in parts of the Southwest. The trend patterns were qualitatively similar t...

More than half (52%) of the spatial and temporal variance in multidecadal drought frequency over the conterminous United States is attributable to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). An additional 22% of the variance in drought frequency is related to a complex spatial pattern of positive and negative trends in drought occurrence possibly relat...

Climate model simulations run as part of the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Drought Working Group initiative were analyzed to determine the impact of three patterns of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies on drought and pluvial frequency and intensity around the world. The three SST forcing patterns include a global pattern similar to the background warming trend, a pattern ...

[Drought indicators are proliferating, but with little consideration of which are most meaningful for describing drought impacts. A number of recent reviews compare different drought indicators, but none assess which indicators are actually used in the many operational drought monitoring and early warning efforts, why they were selected, or whether they have been ‘ground-truthed’, i.e., compare...

Extreme climatic events like droughts, floods, heat waves and ice storms impact ecosystems as well as human societies. There is wide concern about how terrestrial ecosystems respond to extreme climatic events in the context of global warming. In this study, we used satellite-derived vegetation greenness data (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; NDVI), in situ weather station data (temperatu...

Drought is a stochastic natural hazard that is instigated by intense and persistent shortage of precipitation. Following an initial meteorological phenomenon, subsequent impacts are realized on agriculture and hydrology. Among the natural hazards, droughts possess certain unique features; in addition to delayed effects, droughts vary by multiple dynamic dimensions including severity and duratio...

drought affects on all aspects of human actirities seriously as a climatic phenomenon. however, the studies related to this phenomenon based on suitable method are very few. studying the drought features and its prediction can be effective on decreasing of resulted losses or damages. therefore, drought and evaluation of its prediction possibility are studied for some stations of ardabil provinc...

Vegetation effects are currently disregarded in Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), and the sensitivity of PDSI to the choice of potential evaporation (EP) parameterization is often a concern. We developed a revised self-calibrating PDSI model that replaces EP with leaf area index-based total evapotranspiration (ARTS E0). It also included a simple snowmelt module. Using a unique satellite lea...

Drought stress is one of the major abiotic stresses in agriculture worldwide. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of drought stress on chlorophyll content, photosynthesis and transpiration, stomatal conductance and yield characteristics in two varieties of tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum). A pot experiment with three irrigation regimes was carried out in a split-plot blo...

In this study, to improve the efficiency of the original Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI_original), we coupled the Soil and Water Assessment tool (SWAT) and PDSI_original to construct a drought index called PDSI_SWAT. The constructed PDSI_SWAT is applied in the Wei River Basin (WRB) of China during 1960–2012. The comparison of the PDSI_SWAT with four other commonly used drought indices reve...