Spatiotemporal Patterns of Drought Migration Across the Contiguous United States
Name
Water Resources Research - 2025 - Sabut - Spatiotemporal Patterns of Drought Migration Across the Contiguous United States.pdf
Size
5.23 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a52b5c880b6b4888ac5c83e3977860f7
Author(s)
Sabut, Amitesh
Mishra, Ashok
Entekhabi, Dara
Date Issued
June 25, 2025
Journal
Water Resources Research
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Sabut, A., Mishra, A., & Entekhabi, D. (2025). Spatiotemporal patterns of drought migration across the contiguous United States. Water Resources Research, 61.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Drought phenomena exhibit three-dimensional spatiotemporal propagation patterns, often impacting vast regions and lasting for extended periods. Quantifying these spatial and temporal dynamics is essential for understanding their progression and underlying causes. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the spatiotemporal progression and migration of major drought events. In this study, we employed the Spatio-temporal Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (ST-DBSCAN) clustering method to identify significant drought events across the Contiguous United States (CONUS) from 1901 to 2022. This algorithm effectively identifies clusters of arbitrary shapes within a specified three-dimensional space. By tracking the centroids of these drought clusters, we analyzed the progressive development and migration pathways of these events. Our findings indicate that the Great Plains region acts as a key migration corridor, experiencing a higher frequency of drought events compared to other areas in the CONUS. We observed that droughts can travel hundreds of kilometers, gradually intensifying before eventually dissipating. Moreover, a significant linear relationship exists between migration distances and the duration of droughts. Moreover, over 77% of the analyzed drought events exhibited notable spatial shifts, suggesting that the majority of these events migrated across different regions instead of staying confined to a single area. Furthermore, we identified two primary migration patterns for these drought clusters: eastward and westward movements. These findings offer crucial spatiotemporal frameworks for studying the migration process and provide valuable insights for predicting drought occurrences. Plain Language Summary Droughts are among the costliest natural disasters, with significant impacts on societies. To improve prediction and management, it is essential to not only understand when droughts occur but also how they develop and evolve across different regions. While many studies have focused on drought occurrences in specific locations, there has been limited research into their movement and evolution over time and space. In response, we applied advanced spatiotemporal clustering techniques to identify severe drought events across the United States over the past century, examining their movement and transformation. Our findings show that droughts can travel hundreds of kilometers, gradually intensifying before eventually dissipating. We observed that these events predominantly migrate eastward or westward through the Great Plains, which facilitates their progression. This information is critical for improving our understanding and forecasting of drought events.
Subjects
Ashok Mishra Data curation: Amitesh Sabut Formal analysis: Amitesh Sabut Funding acquisition: Ashok Mishra Methodology: Amitesh Sabut
Amitesh Sabut Supervision: Ashok Mishra Validation: Amitesh Sabut Visualization: Ashok Mishra Writing -original draft: Amitesh Sabut Writing -review & editing: Ashok Mishra
Dara Entekhabi
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR039855
