A new study shows heat waves increasingly trigger sudden, severe droughts across the world as the planet warms. Not only are they increasing, but that increase is accelerating. The researchers say this heat-first pattern makes droughts stronger and more damaging than droughts that start on their own.
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Here's who is most at risk and symptoms to watch forApple lanza 2 dispositivos de 599 dólares durante su"gran semana"Mobility exercises are an important part of fitness as we age. Here are some tipsPolygamous sect's sway has dwindled in twin towns on Arizona-Utah line. Residents enjoy new freedomsClimate A resident of a riverside community carries food and containers of drinking water after being distributed due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. WASHINGTON — Heat waves that lead to sudden and damaging drought are spreading across the globe at an accelerating rate, highlighting how climate change-fueled extremes can build dangerously off each other, a new study found. Researchers from South Korea and Australia looked at compound extreme weather — a one-two punch of heat and drought — and found it increasing as the world warms. But what’s rising especially fast is the more damaging type when the heat comes first and that triggers the drought. In the 1980s, that kind of extreme covered only about 2.5% of Earth’s land each year. By 2023, the last year the researchers studied, it was up to 16.7%, with a 10-year average of 7.9% The average has likely gone even higher with 2024’s record global heat and a 2025 that was nearly as warm, the study’s authors said., the scientists said the quickening rate of change is even more concerning than the raw numbers. For about the first two decades since 1980 they examined, the spread of heat-first extremes increased, but the rate in the last 22 years is eight times higher than the earlier rate, the study found. Students carrying umbrellas stand on the dry riverbed of the Jialing Rivera, a tributary of the Yangtze, in southwestern China’s Chongqing Municipality, Aug. 19, 2022. Students carrying umbrellas stand on the dry riverbed of the Jialing Rivera, a tributary of the Yangtze, in southwestern China’s Chongqing Municipality, Aug. 19, 2022. Events where drought happens first, followed by high heat, remain more common and are also rising. But the researchers focused on those increasing cases where heat struck first. That’s because when heat strikes first, the droughts are stronger than when the droughts come first or don’t come with high heat, said co-author Sang-Wook Yeh, a climate scientist at Hanyang University in South Korea. They also lead to “flash droughts,’' which are more damaging than ordinary droughts because they come on suddenly, not allowing people and farmers to prepare, said lead author Yong-Jun Kim, a Hanyang climate scientist. Flash droughts — when warmer air gets thirstier it sucks more water out of soil — have been increasing in a warming world, “The study illustrates a key point about climate change: the most damaging impacts often come from compound extremes. When heat waves, drought, and wildfire risk occur together — as we saw in events like the— the impacts can escalate quickly,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. “What this study shows is that warming doesn’t just make heat waves more likely — it changes how heat and drought interact, amplifying the risks we face.”Residents of a riverside community carry food and containers of drinking water after receiving aid due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. Residents of a riverside community carry food and containers of drinking water after receiving aid due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. “The 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome illustrates how quickly these compound extremes can escalate — temperatures near 50°C in Lytton were followed by rapid drying and extreme wildfire conditionsThe study found the biggest increases in heat-first droughts in South America, western Canada, Alaska and the western United States, and parts of central and eastern Africa. Kim and Yeh said they noticed a “change point” around the year 2000, when everything sped up for heat-then-drought situations. Jennifer Francis, a Woodwell Climate Research Center climate scientist who wasn’t part of the study, said that change point was “eerily coincident with the onset of rapid Arctic warming, sea-ice loss, and decline in spring snow cover on Northern Hemisphere continents.” In addition to long-term warming causing more compound extremes, Kim said they saw a speeding-up in the way heat went from land to air and back again just before that 2000 change point. He and Yeh speculated that Earth may have crossed a Fire burns in a field of grass near Bumbalong, south of the Australian capital, Canberra, Feb. 1, 2020. Fire burns in a field of grass near Bumbalong, south of the Australian capital, Canberra, Feb. 1, 2020. Several aspects of Earth’s climate and ecological systems changed in the late 1990s, with a possible trigger by a, said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who wasn’t part of the study. But he added that it’s hard to tell whether they are permanent changes.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’sBorenstein is an Associated Press science writer, covering climate change, disasters, physics and other science topics. He is based in Washington, D.C.
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