Drought and Hydroclimate

The Earth’s water cycle has been a long-standing focus of my research. Droughts are one of the costliest natural disasters, and how they will change in the future is one of the key research questions in climate science. We have done a number of studies, primarily using climate models, to examine the causes of droughts and project future changes. Relevant research in several areas is illustrated by the papers below.

PUBLISHED PAPERS:

Regional to global scale hydroclimate

• Regional rainfall changes over South America – global warming and natural variability  (Zhang et al., 2016)
• Western US drought over the last decade and its link to the hiatus in global warming  (Delworth et al., 2015)
• Global warming and Australian drought (Delworth and Zeng, 2014)
• Impact of Atlantic and Pacific Ocean temperature variations on droughts and floods (Findell and Delworth, 2010)
• Simulation of Sahel drought in the 20^th and 21^st centuries (Held et al, 2005)
• Oceanic forcing of the Sahel drought of the late 20th century (Lu and Delworth, 2005)
• Increasing risk of Great Floods in a changing climate (Milly et al., 2002)

Early work on Soil Moisture, Climate and Drought

• Impact of soil moisture variability on the atmosphere (Delworth and Manabe, 1989)
• Temporal variability of soil moisture (Delworth and Manabe, 1988) (my first published paper)