Land-Atmosphere Interactions Associated with U.S. Northern and Southern Great Plains Droughts in 2021 and 2022.

Droughts are a recurring feature of the climate system with massive socioeconomic impacts. They occur on multiple spatial and temporal scales and are controlled by different climate mechanisms. So-called flash droughts, which rapidly intensify over multi-week time periods have been linked to the presence of land-atmosphere feedbacks that accelerate drying of the land-surface.

We investigate the influence of land-atmosphere coupling and feedback on drought severity and drought expansion surrounding the U.S. Northern Great Plains (NGP) Drought of 2021 and the Southern Great Plains (SGP) Drought in 2022 by applying the Convective Triggering Potential - Lower Tropospheric Humidity Index (CTP-HI_Low) and Heated Condensation Frameworks (HCF). We use atmospheric profiles from NOAA's rawinsonde network obtained from the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive Version 2 (IGRA-2), to evaluate climatically unusual coupling behavior in spatio-temporal vicinity to changes in U.S. Drought Monitor status with a specific focus on differences between slower and faster intensifying drought.

Initial results show unusually high CTP-HI_Low values during drought intensification indicative of potential land-atmosphere feedback in the NGP near Aberdeen, SD, in 2021 and SGP near Topeka, KS, in 2022.