title: Increasing flash droughts over China during the recent global warming hiatus.
abstract: 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), occurred frequently around the world, and caused devastating impacts on crop yields and water supply. Here, we investigate the long-term trend and variability of flash droughts over China. Flash droughts are most likely to occur over humid and semi-humid regions, such as southern and northeastern China. Flash drought averaged over China increased by 109% from 1979 to 2010, and the increase was mainly due to a long term warming of temperature (50%), followed by the contributions from decreasing soil moisture and increasing ET. There was a slight drop in temperature after 1997, but the increasing trend of flash droughts was tripled. Further results indicate that the decreasing temperature was compensated by the accelerated drying trends of soil moisture and enhanced ET, leading to an acceleration of flash droughts during the warming hiatus. The anthropogenic warming in the next few decades may exacerbate future flash drought conditions in China.
authors: RCE-TEA, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors: Linying
authors: L
authors: Wang
authors: RCE-TEA, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.
authors: Xing
authors: X
authors: Yuan
authors: LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.
authors: Zhenghui
authors: Z
authors: Xie
authors: Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK.
authors: Peili
authors: P
authors: Wu
authors: Institute of Arid Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, Lanzhou 730020, China.
authors: Yaohui
authors: Y
authors: Li