Zhang Miao, Yuan Xing, Zeng Zhenzhong, Pan Ming, Wu Peili, Xiao Jingfeng, Keenan Trevor F
School of Hydrology and Water Resources, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China.
State Key Laboratory of Earth System Numerical Modeling and Application, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Nat Commun. 2025 Mar 27;16(1):2984. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-58253-z.
Climate change has led to the transition of droughts into rapid and intensified phenomena known as flash droughts, presenting considerable challenges for risk management, particularly concerning their impact on ecosystem productivity. Quantifying the ecosystem's capacity to maintain productivity during flash droughts, referred to as ecosystem resistance, is crucial to assess drought impacts. However, it remains uncertain how the resistance of ecosystem productivity to flash drought changes over time. Here we show that vegetation resistance to flash droughts declines by up to 27% (±5%) over the Northern Hemisphere hotspots during 2001-2022, including eastern Asia, western North America, and northern Europe. The notable decline in vegetation resistance is mainly attributed to increased vapour pressure deficit and temperature, and enhanced vegetation structural sensitivity to water availability. Flash droughts pose higher ecological risks than slowly-developing droughts during the growing seasons, where ecosystem productivity experiences faster decline rates with a shorter response time. Our results underscore the limited ecosystem capacity to resist flash droughts under climate change.
气候变化已导致干旱转变为迅速且加剧的现象，即骤发干旱，这给风险管理带来了巨大挑战，尤其是在其对生态系统生产力的影响方面。量化生态系统在骤发干旱期间维持生产力的能力，即生态系统抗性，对于评估干旱影响至关重要。然而，生态系统生产力对骤发干旱的抗性如何随时间变化仍不确定。在此我们表明，在2001年至2022年期间，北半球热点地区（包括东亚、北美西部和北欧）的植被对骤发干旱的抗性下降了高达27%（±5%）。植被抗性的显著下降主要归因于蒸汽压亏缺和温度的增加，以及植被结构对水分可利用性的敏感性增强。在生长季节，骤发干旱比缓慢发展的干旱带来更高的生态风险，此时生态系统生产力下降速度更快且响应时间更短。我们的结果强调了在气候变化下生态系统抵抗骤发干旱的能力有限。
