is making droughts faster and more furious, especially a specific fast-developing heat-driven kind that catch farmers by surprise, a new study found.found droughts in general are being triggered faster. But it also showed that a special and particularly nasty sudden kind — called"flash droughts" by experts — is casting an ever bigger crop-killing footprint.
in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, said Jason Otkin, a study co-author and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.started two years ago as a rapid onset drought, said Joel Lisonbee, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Integrated Drought Information System in Colorado. He wasn't part of the study but praised it, saying"essentially a warmer world allows for faster onset of drought.
Yuan said some of the bigger increases in sudden droughts have been in Europe and Australia. Outside experts pointed to the Amazon as prone to them.Yuan’s team also used computer simulations – both with worst-case warming and more moderate warming – and projected that the proportion of flash droughts will increase in a warmer world and droughts will continue to keep happening faster.