Shuo Wang

The emergence of flash drought has attracted widespread attention due to its rapid onset. However, little is known about the recent evolution of flash droughts in terms of the speed of onset and the causes of such a rapid onset phase of flash droughts. Here, we present a comprehensive assessment of the onset development of flash droughts and the underlying mechanisms on a global scale. We find that 33.64-46.18% of flash droughts with 5-day onset of drying, and there is a significant increasing trend in the proportion of flash droughts with the 1-pentad onset time globally during the period 2000-2020. Flash droughts do not appear to be occurring more frequently in most global regions, just coming on faster. In addition, atmospheric aridity is likely to create a flash drought-prone environment, and the joint influence of soil moisture depletion and atmospheric aridity further accelerates the rapid onset of flash droughts.

This work investigates the aerodynamics of a NACA 0012 airfoil at the chord-based Reynolds numbers (Rec) from 5.3 × 103 to 2.0 × 104. The lift and drag coefficients, CL and CD, of the airfoil, along with the flow structure, were measured as the turbulent intensity Tu of oncoming flow varies from 0.6% to 6.0%. The analysis of the present data and those in the literature unveils a total of eight distinct flow structures around the suction side of the airfoil. Four Rec regimes, i.e., the ultra-low (<1.0 × 104), low (1.0 × 104–3.0 × 105), moderate (3.0 × 105–5.0 × 106), and high Rec (>5.0 × 106), are proposed based on their characteristics of the CL-Rec relationship and the flow structure. It has been observed that Tu has a more pronounced effect at lower Rec than at higher Rec on the shear layer separation, reattachment, transition, and formation of the separation bubble. As a result, CL, CD, CL/CD and their dependence on the airfoil angle of attack all vary with Tu. So does the critical Reynolds number Rec,cr that divides the ultra-low and low Rec regimes. It is further noted that the effect of increasing Tu bears similarity in many aspects to that of increasing Rec, albeit with differences. The concept of the effective Reynolds number Rec,eff advocated for the moderate and high Rec regimes is re-evaluated for the low and ultra-low Rec regimes. The Rec,eff treats the non-zero Tu effect as an addition of Rec and is determined based on the presently defined Rec,cr. It has been found that all the maximum lift data from both present measurements and previous reports collapse into a single curve in the low and ultra-low Rec regimes if scaled with Rec,eff.

The “dry gets drier, wet gets wetter” (DGDWGW) paradigm well describes the pattern of precipitation changes over the oceans. However, it has also been usually considered as a simplified pattern of regional changes in wet/dry under global warming, although GCMs mostly do not agree this pattern over land. To examine the validity of this paradigm over land and evaluate how usage of drought indices estimated from different hydrological variables affects detection of regional wet/dry trends, we take the arid regions of central Asia as a case study area and estimate the drying and wetting trends during the period of 1950–2015 based on multiple drought indices. These indices include the standardized precipitation index (SPI), the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) and self‐calibrating PDSI (sc_PDSI) with both the Thornthwaite (th) and Penman–Monteith (pm) equations in PDSI calculation (namely, PDSI_th, PDSI_pm, sc_PDSI_th and sc_PDSI_pm). The results show that there is an overall agreement among the indices in terms of inter‐annual variation, especially for the PDSIs. All drought indices except SPI show a drying trend over the five states of central Asia (CAS5: including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). The four PDSIs and SPEI reveal a wetting tendency over the northwestern China (NW; including Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Hexi Corridor). The contrasting trends between CAS5 and NW can also be revealed in soil moisture (SM) variations. The nonlinear wet and dry variations are dominated by the 3–7 years oscillations for the indices. Relationships between the six indices and climate variables show the major drought drivers have regional features: with mean temperature (TMP), precipitation total (PRE) and potential evapotranspiration (PET) for CAS5, and PRE and PET for NW. Finally, our analyses indicate that the dry and wet variations are strongly correlated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Abstract. Model calibration is essential for hydrologic modeling of large watersheds in a heterogeneous mountain environment. Little guidance is available for model calibration protocols for distributed models that aim at capturing the spatial variability of hydrologic processes. This study used the physically-based distributed hydrologic model, MIKE SHE, to contrast a lumped calibration protocol that used streamflow measured at one single watershed outlet to a multi-site calibration method which employed streamflow measurements at three stations within the large Chaohe River basin in northern China. Simulation results showed that the single-site calibrated model was able to sufficiently simulate the hydrographs for two of the three stations (Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of 0.65–0.75, and correlation coefficient 0.81–0.87 during the testing period), but the model performed poorly for the third station (Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient only 0.44). Sensitivity analysis suggested that streamflow of upstream area of the watershed was dominated by slow groundwater, whilst streamflow of middle- and down- stream areas by relatively quick interflow. Therefore, a multi-site calibration protocol was deemed necessary. Due to the potential errors and uncertainties with respect to the representation of spatial variability, performance measures from the multi-site calibration protocol slightly decreased for two of the three stations, whereas it was improved greatly for the third station. We concluded that multi-site calibration protocol reached a compromise in term of model performance for the three stations, reasonably representing the hydrographs of all three stations with Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient ranging from 0.59–072. The multi-site calibration protocol applied in the analysis generally has advantages to the single site calibration protocol.