About this Research Topic

Background

Drought is one of the most destructive natural disasters in terms of social, economic, and environmental implications, impacting a wide range of hydroclimatic zones worldwide. Droughts are caused by a variety of causes, and their effects can be seen in a variety of socioeconomic sectors and ecological systems, including irrigated agriculture, crop yield, biodiversity, aquatic and riparian habitat quality, water quality, urban and industrial water supply, hydropower generation, etc. These negative consequences are a major issue in the sense of climate change and increased human exposure to water shortages, especially with rapid population growth and urbanization. As such, an improved understanding and accurately and timely forecasting of drought have been seen as a central topic in hydroclimatic research. With access to high-resolution satellite data and high-performance computing resources, modelling approaches, new tools and advanced methodologies can be presented for more effective monitoring, attribution, forecasting, and reliable projections of drought and its impacts at various spatial and temporal scales. This Research Topic addresses advanced techniques and methods in understanding drought processes from local-to-global scales and how these developments can advance current plans and strategies for mitigating drought risks and impacts.

Objectives:
- To examine advanced methods and techniques promoting drought understanding and quantification;
- To highlight changes in different aspects of drought (e.g. meteorlogical, hydrological, and agricultural) across different climatic zones worldwide;
- To know techniques of drought attribution;
- To propose new approaches to determine physical drivers of drought (including atmospheric dynamic);
- To assess possible implications of Earth Observation in advancing drought research;
- To assess uncertainties in drought simulations and projections, including drought forecasting.

This Research Topic may cover, but is not limited to, the following aspects:
- The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to aid drought monitoring and preparedness;
- Statistical techniques for drought quantification based on different drought metrics (including Earth System Models);
- Methods for drought attribution;
- Earth Observation (EO) for drought assessment and mitigation;
- Integrated data fusion and mining approaches for drought assessment;
- Assessing the performance of different downscaling approaches for drought assessment;
- Future drought risks under different climate scenarios and model configurations;
- Predicting drought on seasonal to decadal scales;
- Challenges, opportunities, and progress in drought quantification in arid and semi-arid regions;
- New paradigms and techniques to assess drought mechanisms related to atmospheric dynamic;
- Exploring the links between drought and other natural hazards (e.g. forest fires, heatwaves, vegetation browning, etc);
- Developments in assessing the impacts of environmental and socioeconomic impacts of drought;
- Strategies to adapt effectively to current and future changes in drought severity;
- Local-to-global drought monitoring systems.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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