@misc{ShahHariRakovecetal., author = {Shah, Jignesh and Hari, Vittal and Rakovec, Oldrich and Markonis, Yannis and Samaniego, Luis and Mishra, Vimal and Hanel, Martin and Hinz, Christoph and Kumar, Rohini}, title = {Increasing footprint of climate warming on flash droughts occurrence in Europe}, series = {Environmental Research Letters}, volume = {17}, journal = {Environmental Research Letters}, number = {6}, issn = {1748-9326}, doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/ac6888}, abstract = {Flash droughts are caused by a rapid depletion of soil moisture, and they severely affect vegetation growth and agricultural production. Notwithstanding the growing importance of flash droughts under the warming climate, drivers of flash droughts across the Europe are not well understood. Here we estimate the changes in flash droughts characteristics across Europe using the ERA5 reanalysis dataset for 1950-2019 period. We find a substantial increase in the frequency and spatial extent of flash droughts across Europe (with 79\% of the total area) during the growing season with at-least one fourth of domain showing two-fold increase in the recent decades. Increased occurrence of flash drought is largely attributed to frequent occurrence of warmer and drier compound extremes, with a sharp gradient of changes being noticed in Mediterranean and Central European regions. Compound meteorological extremes causing the flash drought events across Europe are pre-dominantly driven by the recent climate warming. With unabated greenhouse gas emissions and current pace of climate warming, Europe is likely to face an increased occurrence of flash droughts, requiring prompt response for effective drought adaptation and management strategies.}, language = {en} } @misc{BhawarKumarLawandetal., author = {Bhawar, Rohini L. and Kumar, Vinay and Lawand, Divyaja and Kedia, Sumita and Naik, Mrunal and Modale, Shripriya and Reddy, P. R. C. and Islam, Sahidul and Khare, Manoj}, title = {Aerosol emission patterns from the February 2019 Karnataka fire}, series = {Fire}, volume = {7}, journal = {Fire}, number = {12}, editor = {Williamson, Grant}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2571-6255}, doi = {10.3390/fire7120424}, pages = {1 -- 15}, abstract = {Forests are vital for life on Earth but are threatened by forest fires, which have significant impacts on climate change both locally and globally. This study examines a forest fire that lasted from 15 to 26 February 2019 in Karnataka, India, using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model to analyze the effects and atmospheric spread of fire-emitted aerosols. Model simulations are analyzed to understand the horizontal and vertical transport and radiative effects of the fire. The results show high aerosol levels and smoke particles reaching up to 3.5 km altitude and above. The fire raised near-surface air temperatures by ~1-1.5 °C. The net atmospheric forcing due to the fire over the affected area ranged from approximately 10 to 14 W/m 2 , resulting in heating rates between about 0.002 and 0.005 K/day in the impacted region.}, language = {en} }