Flash drought is also a global problem, with Brazil, India and many countries in Africa face the worst effects. In 2010, a flash drought followed a heatwave in Russia suspending wheat exportsa major disruption to communities across the Middle East that depend on the country’s grain.
Dennis Todey, director of the US Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Center, says the damage a flash drought can cause depends on the crop and the time of year. Maize is most vulnerable during the midsummer pollination season, while soybeans are affected in August and wheat during the spring sowing season.
Drought is a natural part of the climate in this region, especially in the western part of the Corn Belt, an area that includes the Midwest and the Great Plains, Todey said. Many farmers have learned to adapt and integrate drought conditions into their growing cycle. But what makes flash droughts so dangerous is their rapid onset, Todey said, leaving agricultural producers with little time to prepare.
“Drought is most often considered a slow-start event and then a slow-stop event,” Todey said. “In the context of a flash drought… instead of just starting to dry out, you have surfaces that dry very quickly; you have some new crops that begin to stress more quickly. ”
However, many farmers do not know if they are starting to experience drought, until the expected rains do not appear. Keeff Felty, a fourth-generation cotton and wheat farmer in the state’s southwest, said mid-October rainfall helped ease a flash drought that began in Oklahoma in September, but then a much longer drought. As a result, some of his crops never sprouted, while his overall yield dropped when it was time to harvest.
“There is a lot of information out there, and you have to find out for yourself what works best for you, but you also have to be prepared for it to go completely south,” says Felty. “No one saw” [the drought] coming, and it’s just a fact of the weather that we don’t have any control over it. That’s just life.”
Typical droughts can last for months or even years — the western United States is now in its third decade about “super-droughts” — while flash droughts can end more quickly, within weeks or months, says Yang. And they can strike in relatively wet areas, including the eastern part of the country, where drought conditions are much rarer than in the West.
The main reason they happen faster is climate change, says Yang. As the air warms, it can lead to more evaporation and drying of the soil. This could happen even in areas that are expected to receive more rain due to climate change, because scientists predict that rainfall will be unevenly distributed – falling into these extremes. more severe and make other regions of the year drier.
“All [recent] Yang said. And with world on the road To overcome global temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average, he hopes to see both flash droughts and longer-lasting droughts occurring. more often.
The researchers are working on improving their model to better predict flash drought with the help of new technologies, such as more detailed satellite monitoring and machine learning, Yang said. The main sign they were looking for was a high rate of transpiration, when plants draw water from the soil and then release it into the air through leaves — a process that accelerates with high temperatures and winds and can be monitored by Special cameras detect fluorescence, or heat, emitted by plants.
If farmers could know in advance when a flash drought could happen, Todey said, they could skip or delay planting, or reduce fertilizer use knowing the crops wouldn’t grow. They can also adjust planting schedules and better care for the soil by reducing tilling, which dries out the soil more. But with less and less time to prepare for flash drought, Todey said, some may have to make a difficult choice about whether to plant.
“Agricultural producers naturally adapt to changing conditions,” says Todey. “But finally there comes a time [losses] become more frequent. People started going, “OK, this isn’t working.”
