Greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions are lengthening and intensifying droughts

Greenhouse gas emissions are expected to lengthen and intensify droughts. Credit: Amir AghaKouchak / University of California, Irvine

Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollution emitted by human activities are responsible for increases in the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts around the world, according to researchers funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) program.

In a study published recently in Nature Communications, University of California, Irvine (UCI) scientists showed that over the past century, the likelihood of stronger and more long-lasting dry spells grew in the Americas, the Mediterranean, western and southern Africa and eastern Asia.

“There has always been natural variability in drought events around the world, but our research shows the clear human influence on drying, specifically from anthropogenic aerosols, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases,” said lead author Felicia Chiang, who conducted the project as a UCI graduate student in civil & environmental engineering.

Chiang, who earned her Ph.D. in 2020 and is now a postdoctoral scholar at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said that her team’s research demonstrated significant shifts in drought characteristics – frequency, duration and intensity – due to human influence, or what they call “anthropogenic forcing.”

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