Drought Attribution in North America

Due to the multifaceted and impact-dependent properties of drought, these types of events are generally underrepresented in the event attribution literature. Here, we take a broad approach to assess the influence of anthropogenic forcings on drought characteristics. We utilize large ensembles of a coupled earth system model run with all forcings, which includes both anthropogenic and natural influences, and a separate set of simulations run with only natural forcings. These simulations were bias corrected with a multivariate approach to represent finer scales. We compare the magnitude, duration, and area of drought events in North America between the two modelled scenarios. The impact of anthropogenic forcings on drought characteristics and occurrence is assessed across a range of spatial and temporal scales.