Warming and vegetation greening drive recent surge in flash droughts

Flash droughts have become more frequent, yet their underlying mechanisms of such changes remain unclear. Using an explainable artificial intelligence-based clustering framework with reanalysis products and Earth system models, we show that the major driving mechanisms of global flash droughts have shifted from precipitation dominance to a compound effect of temperature, transpiration, and precipitation. This transition drives a surge in flash droughts over the past decade, with more rapidly developing, severe, and enduring soil droughts. Anthropogenic warming and vegetation greening are the main drivers of the observed surge. The transition, which has emerged beyond natural climate variability since 2017 and is mainly detected in Eurasia, Amazon, and Africa, exposes ~650 million people under threat and reduces gross primary productivity by 0.15 ± 0.1 petagrams of carbon per year. Our results demonstrate that biosphere and atmosphere responses to anthropogenic forcing have altered flash drought drivers, emphasizing the urgent need for targeted mitigation strategies.

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Publication Details

Journal
Science Advances
Published
2026-05-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aea8452
Primary Topic
Hydrology and Drought Analysis
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Warming and vegetation greening drive recent surge in flash droughts

Jinghao Qiu, K Wang, Emanuele Bevacqua, Jakob Zscheischler et al.
Science Advances
Hydrology and Drought Analysis
article

Warming and vegetation greening drive recent surge in flash droughts

Jinghao Qiu, K Wang, Emanuele Bevacqua, Jakob Zscheischler, Li J, Yao Zhang, Xing Yuan, Shijie Jiang, Sha Zhou, ZhaoLi Wang, Shilong Piao
article en

Abstract

Flash droughts have become more frequent, yet their underlying mechanisms of such changes remain unclear. Using an explainable artificial intelligence-based clustering framework with reanalysis products and Earth system models, we show that the major driving mechanisms of global flash droughts have shifted from precipitation dominance to a compound effect of temperature, transpiration, and precipitation. This transition drives a surge in flash droughts over the past decade, with more rapidly developing, severe, and enduring soil droughts. Anthropogenic warming and vegetation greening are the main drivers of the observed surge. The transition, which has emerged beyond natural climate variability since 2017 and is mainly detected in Eurasia, Amazon, and Africa, exposes ~650 million people under threat and reduces gross primary productivity by 0.15 ± 0.1 petagrams of carbon per year. Our results demonstrate that biosphere and atmosphere responses to anthropogenic forcing have altered flash drought drivers, emphasizing the urgent need for targeted mitigation strategies.

Science AdvancesVol. 12(22)
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (DE), Norsk Hydro (Germany) (DE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Peking University (CN), Beijing Normal University (CN), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (CN), Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (DE), Technische Universität Dresden (DE), South China University of Technology (CN)
Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Climate action
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Hydrology and Drought Analysis
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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