Assessment of future drought in Southwest China based on CMIP5 multimodel projections

In the last decade, a series of severe and extensive droughts have swept across Southwest China, resulting in tremendous economic losses, deaths, and disruption to society. Consequently, this study is motivated by the paramount importance of assessing future changes in drought in Southwest China. Precipitation is likely to decrease over most parts of Southwest China around the beginning of the century, followed by widespread precipitation increases; the increase in potential evapotranspiration (PET), due to the joint effects of increased temperature and surface net radiation and decreased relative humidity, will overwhelm the whole region throughout the entire 21st century. In comparative terms, the enhancement of PET will outweigh that of precipitation, particularly under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, resulting in intensified drought. Generally, the drying tendency will be in the southeast portion, whereas the mountainous region in the northwest will become increasingly wetter owing to abundant precipitation increases. Droughts classified as moderate/severe according to historical standards will become the norm in the 2080s under RCP4.5/RCP8.5. Future drought changes will manifest different characteristics depending on the time scale: the magnitude of change at a time scale of 48 months is nearly twice as great as that at 3 months. Furthermore, we will see that not only will incidences of severe and extreme drought increase dramatically in the future, but extremely wet events will also become more probable. © 2014 Chinese National Committee for International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Science Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.