Dataset Information

Increased drought severity tracks warming in the United States' largest river basin.

ABSTRACT: Across the Upper Missouri River Basin, the recent drought of 2000 to 2010, known as the "turn-of-the-century drought," was likely more severe than any in the instrumental record including the Dust Bowl drought. However, until now, adequate proxy records needed to better understand this event with regard to long-term variability have been lacking. Here we examine 1,200 y of streamflow from a network of 17 new tree-ring-based reconstructions for gages across the upper Missouri basin and an independent reconstruction of warm-season regional temperature in order to place the recent drought in a long-term climate context. We find that temperature has increasingly influenced the severity of drought events by decreasing runoff efficiency in the basin since the late 20th century (1980s) onward. The occurrence of extreme heat, higher evapotranspiration, and associated low-flow conditions across the basin has increased substantially over the 20th and 21st centuries, and recent warming aligns with increasing drought severities that rival or exceed any estimated over the last 12 centuries. Future warming is anticipated to cause increasingly severe droughts by enhancing water deficits that could prove challenging for water management.

SUBMITTER: Martin JT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7260967 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Increased drought severity tracks warming in the United States' largest river basin.

Martin Justin T JT Pederson Gregory T GT Woodhouse Connie A CA Cook Edward R ER McCabe Gregory J GJ Anchukaitis Kevin J KJ Wise Erika K EK Erger Patrick J PJ Dolan Larry L McGuire Marketa M Gangopadhyay Subhrendu S Chase Katherine J KJ Littell Jeremy S JS Gray Stephen T ST St George Scott S Friedman Jonathan M JM Sauchyn David J DJ St-Jacques Jeannine-Marie JM King John J

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20200511 21

Across the Upper Missouri River Basin, the recent drought of 2000 to 2010, known as the "turn-of-the-century drought," was likely more severe than any in the instrumental record including the Dust Bowl drought. However, until now, adequate proxy records needed to better understand this event with regard to long-term variability have been lacking. Here we examine 1,200 y of streamflow from a network of 17 new tree-ring-based reconstructions for gages across the upper Missouri basin and an indepen ...[more]

PMID: 32393620

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Project description:BackgroundLittle is known about the effect of drought on all-cause mortality, especially in higher income countries such as the United States. As the frequency and severity of droughts are likely to increase, understanding the connections between drought and mortality becomes increasingly important.MethodsOur exposure variable was an annual cumulative drought severity score based on the 1-month, county-level Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index. The outcome variables of demographic subgroup-specific all-cause mortality count data per year were obtained from the National Vital Statistics System. Any counts below 10 deaths were censored in that demographic group per county. We modeled county-stratum-year mortality using interval-censored negative binomial regression with county-level random intercepts, for each combined age-race-sex stratum either with or without further stratification by climate regions. Fixed effects meta-regression was used to test the associations between age, race, sex, and region with the drought-mortality regression coefficients. Predictive margins were then calculated from the meta-regression model to estimate larger subgroup (e.g., 'race' or 'sex') associations of drought with mortality.ResultsMost of the results were null for associations between drought severity and mortality, across joint strata of race, age, sex and region, but incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for 17 subgroups were significant after accounting for the multiple testing; ten were?<?1 indicating a possible protective effect of drought on mortality for that particular subpopulation. The meta-regression indicated heterogeneity in the association of drought with mortality according to race, climate region, and age, but not by sex. Marginal means of the estimated log-incidence rate ratios differed significantly from zero for age groups 25-34, 35-44, 45-54 and 55-64; for the white race group; and for the South, West and Southwest regions, in the analysis that included wet county-years. The margin of the meta-regression model suggested a slightly negative, but not statistically significant, association of drought with same-year mortality in the overall population.ConclusionsThere were significant, heterogeneous-direction associations in subpopulation-stratified models, after controlling for multiple comparisons, suggesting that the impacts of drought on mortality may not be monolithic across the United States. Meta-regression identified systematic differences in the associations of drought severity with all-cause mortality according to climate region, race, and age. These findings suggest there may be important contextual differences in the effects of drought severity on mortality, motivating further work focused on local mechanisms. We speculate that some of the estimated negative associations of drought severity with same-year mortality could be consistent with either a protective effect of drought on total mortality in the same year, or with a delayed health effect of drought beyond the same year. Further research is needed to clarify associations of drought with more specific causes of death and with sublethal health outcomes, for specific subpopulations, and considering lagged effects occurring beyond the same year as the drought.

Dataset Information

Increased drought severity tracks warming in the United States' largest river basin.

Publications

Increased drought severity tracks warming in the United States' largest river basin.

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