Megadrought, megapluvial conditions
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Context: According to the research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences extreme drought or extreme rainfall (pluvial) conditions will become the norm for the rest of the 21st century for some parts of Earth.
Key findings:
- Western Europe, southwestern United States and northern Mexico, southern Africa and the western Amazon will see the earliest emergence of megadrought conditions.
- Emergence of megapluvials “affects less of the global land surface”, but does take place in India and eastern Africa,
- ‘Hot droughts’ can increase in frequency.
- Soil moisture changes are so large in some regions that conditions that will be termed a ‘megadrought’ or ‘megapluvial’ event today are projected to become average.
- Emergence of drought and pluvial conditions will occur over 61 per cent of the global land surface (excluding Antarctica) by 2080.
- Need to adapt and manage: There is an increasingly urgent need to understand the full range of natural climatic variability, especially on decadal and longer timescales.
- Over a fifth of India’s land area is facing drought-like conditions, uneven distribution and failed monsoon are among the main causes.
Megadrought
- It is a period of 20 to 30 years where conditions are drier than average.
- There may be some wet years sprinkled in, but drought impacts remain throughout the period. These are much longer in scale than droughts, which typically last months or years
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