Comparative Analysis of Future Global Drought Risk Under Different Scenarios

Drought risk assessment is one of the most important basic research topics on the quantitative understanding of the mechanism of drought risk and scientifically reducing the adverse effects of drought, which is of great significance in the theory and practice of developing coping strategies and drought management plans. In this paper, the drought risk on a global scale was quantified according to the hazard, exposure, and vulnerability of drought from 2020 to 2099. In addition, the trends of drought risk variation under two different representative concentration pathways (RCP45 and RCP85) scenarios are analyzed and compared. According to the variation character of drought risk in different scenarios, it is divided into 7 types, and the specific differences of each type are discussed. The results show that (1) the areas with high drought risk are primarily concentrated in populated and high precipitation variability places, such as Pakistan, western India, and central North America. (2) When the greenhouse gas concentration rises from RCP45 to RCP85, the drought risk in about 36.88% of the world will worsen, which is primarily concentrated in southern North America, southeastern South America, southern Africa, southern Oceania, southern Asia, and western Europe.