Until now, flash drought research has been on the regional scale and has been limited to observations and reanalyses. CLEX researchers have been the first to examine flash drought in climate models.
A major component of the research in the Drought program over the past four months has focused on the interface between real-world data and climate models. The aim of much of this research has been to improve how land surface models represent some of the key processes that influence the length, and severity of drought.
CLEX researchers and colleagues find soil moisture variations need to be considered over at least a decade before a steady-state assumption can be made.
Researchers have developed a hybrid approach to estimate recent rainfall that combines satellite-based rainfall estimates with satellite-based soil moisture estimates. When this approach was tested against independent rain gauge measurements it showed notable improvements.
This study illustrates how future uncertainty of climate models in predicting hot extremes is controlled by two factors, both related to amplification of hot extremes through land-atmosphere interactions
By employing an atmosphere-only version of ACCESS, CLEX researchers generated multiple sea surface temperature patterns of the same El Nino and La Nina events, and assessed how this influenced heatwaves over various Australian regions.