Drought followed by torrential rain can unleash deadly floods in arid regions, like those that affected Libya in 2023.
drought
Posted inNews
Some Urban Trees Suffer Under Climate Stress
Heat and drought hit trees in Boston and New York City harder than those in their rural counterparts.
Posted inNews
Fiber-Optic Cables Used to Measure Changing Soil Moisture
Scientists are using seismic techniques to measure soil moisture. Their results show that recent droughts in California depleted water in the shallow subsurface.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Amazonian Drought May Have Long-Lasting Effects on Carbon Cycle
Dry conditions stemming from the 2015–2016 El Niño caused significant carbon loss.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Tree Mortality May Lead to Carbon Tipping Point in the Amazon by 2050s
A new study suggests drought conditions in the Amazon rainforest over the rest of the century.
Posted inNews
Many Forests in One: A Glimpse into the Amazon’s Diversity
In some areas of the Amazon rainforest, trees green up as a response to drought, while in others they die off. Scientists are trying to understand why.
Posted inNews
Extreme Wildfires Are Getting More Extreme and Occurring More Often
The world’s most energetic wildfires have doubled in intensity and number over the past 2 decades, with climate change and land management likely to blame.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
New Observations Provide Insight into Soil Desiccation Cracking
A new application of distributed fiber optic sensing provides early detection of soil desiccation cracking behavior and illustrates, for the first time, the phenomenon of soil crack breathing.
Posted inNews
Potential Relief for the Colorado River’s Near Future
A new study reveals that precipitation could boost the iconic river’s flow in the next couple of decades despite the deleterious effects of warming temperatures due to climate change.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
A Powerful New Model for U.S. Climate–Air Quality Interactions
NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory has developed a new variable-resolution global chemistry-climate model for research at the nexus of U.S. climate and air quality extremes.