China-US study finds urbanisation worsens extreme droughts

Nearly 40 per cent of world’s cities face more severe droughts now than in 1980, pointing to need for sustainable urban design and planning

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Researchers say the loss of vegetation due to urbanisation could lead to more intense local atmospheric drought. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:00pm, 17 Aug 2024

Nearly 40 per cent of the world’s cities are experiencing worsening drought as urbanisation leads to warmer and drier environments, according to a joint study by scientists from China and the US.

Although urbanisation is known to affect ecological, environmental and meteorological processes and systems, its impact on local drought remains under-researched.

Researchers from institutions including China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan University and the University of Texas at Austin have conducted a quantitative analysis to understand the impact of urbanisation on local drought.

They looked at data from weather stations in urban and rural areas around the globe from 1980 to 2020, as well as physics-based weather research and forecasting model simulations.

They found that the severity of drought worsened at around 36 per cent of global city weather stations during the period.

In addition, they projected that more than half of the world’s urban regions would face increasingly severe droughts by 2050.

This is particularly pronounced in larger cities and those with less green cover. Areas with high concentrations of metropolitan clusters, such as eastern China and the western United States, are associated with more severe droughts.