{"id":86236,"date":"2024-09-18T12:37:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T16:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/?p=86236"},"modified":"2024-09-18T12:40:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T16:40:09","slug":"major-climate-reports-may-be-underestimating-drought-flood-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/news\/18092024\/major-climate-reports-may-be-underestimating-drought-flood-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"New Study Suggests Major Climate Reports May Be Underestimating Drought Risks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Droughts in the coming decades could be longer than projected by current climate models, a new study<\/a> published Wednesday in Nature warns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The international team of scientists examined potential biases that could skew climate models used to make drought projections<\/a> under Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change midrange and high emissions scenarios. The researchers corrected for the bias by calibrating those models with observations of the longest annual dry spells between 1998 and 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of this century, they found that the average longest periods of drought could be 10 days longer than previously projected. Trouble spots included North America, Southern Africa and Madagascar, where the newly calibrated models showed that the increase in the longest annual dry spell could be about twice what the older models predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur study pinpoints global regions where current climate model projections of drought increases may be underestimated,\u201d said lead author Irina Petrova<\/a>, a hydrological extremes researcher at Ghent University in Belgium. The new information can help raise awareness of growing drought risks for populations in the affected areas, \u201cbut also should call for the attention of policymakers and governing organizations, prompting them to reassess future drought hazards in these regions and take adequate actions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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