As Earth warms, more ‘flash droughts’ suck soil, plants dry

By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

A new study finds that climate change is making droughts faster and more furious — and especially one fast-moving kind of drought that can take farmers by surprise. The study in Thursday’s journal Science found droughts are being triggered faster overall. But it also found that a phenomenon that experts call “flash droughts” is casting an ever-bigger crop-killing footprint. Hydrologists and meteorologists say it’s insidious because it’s caused not just by the lack of rain or snow that’s behind typical slow-onset drought. In flash droughts, the air gets so hot and so dry that it sucks water right out of plants and soil. The 2012 drought that hammered the central U.S. was one such drought.