Description:

Flash droughts emerge quickly and lead to devastating impacts on agriculture, water resources, and ecosystems. They are often accompanied by intense heatwaves that exacerbate the social and economic hardship. The sudden onset and rapid intensification of flash droughts set them apart from their more conventional slow-developing counterparts, which provides both challenges and opportunities for monitoring, physical understanding, and prediction of this harmful class of drought. This session invites submissions that advance understanding of the physical mechanisms, predictability, monitoring, and impacts of flash drought and related heatwaves. Mechanistic studies that focus on the relevance of remote and local physical drivers of flash drought regionality and seasonality, as well as their prediction skill in forecast systems are encouraged. Also encouraged are studies that advance understanding of flash drought monitoring, including those that focus on physical and impact-based indicators.