Multivariate assessment and attribution of droughts in Central Asia.

ABSTRACT: While the method for estimating the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is now more closely aligned to key water balance components, a comprehensive assessment for measuring long-term droughts that recognizes meteorological, agro-ecological and hydrological perspectives and their attributions is still lacking. Based on physical approaches linked to potential evapotranspiration (PET), the PDSI in 1965-2014 showed a mixture of drying (42% of the land area) and wetting (58% of the land area) that combined to give a slightly wetting trend (0.0036 per year). Despite the smaller overall trend, there is a switch to a drying trend over the past decade (-0.023 per year). We designed numerical experiments and found that PDSI trend responding to the dramatic increase in air temperature and slight ch

SUBMITTER: Li Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5430973 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature