2017-2018 Flash Drought event in Argentina: Characteristics, Impacts and Lessons Learned

PABLO C. SPENNEMANN; FEDERICO BERT; GUILLERMO PODESTÁ; MARÍA DE ESTRADA; MARIANO QUESADA; GUSTAVO NAUMANN; KUCHERUK LUCAS; JUAN A. RIVERA; ALESSIO BOCCO; MERCEDES SALVIA; MARÍA DE LOS MILAGROS SKANSI; CAROLINA VERA; CECILIA HIDALGO ; CELESTE SAULO

Boulder

Workshop; 2nd National Flash Drought Workshop; 2023

NOAA-NIDIS

A major drought occurred during the 2017-2018 summer in the Pampas of Argentina, a major world breadbasket. The drought was linked to a mild La Niña event combined to intraseasonal modes of atmospheric variability. Several locations in the Pampas showed historical precipitation deficits during this event, which were compounded by high temperatures and heat waves during early 2018. The Flash Drought Intensification Index (FDII) was applied to the ERA 5 Land soil moisture simulations in order to analyze this event. The FDII showed that this event was the most severe of the 1981-2020 period, and several locations also showed the highest soil moisture intensification rate prior to this event. This event had major impacts on maize and soybean yields of summer crops. When propagated throughout Argentina’s economy, crop losses (about 1550 M USD) had an overall impact three times higher, suggesting that Argentina’s GNP decreased at least 0.8% due to the drought. The Drought Information System for South America (SISSA for its spanish acronyms), was implemented through a partnership between WMO, NOAA and the Regional Climate Center for southern South America–RCC-SSA, a six-country WMO institution intended to support national meteorological services (https://sissa.crc-sas.org/). After the 2017-2018 flash drought event, SISSA implemented new products as the SPI and SPEI (e.g. 1, 3 months) updated every 5 days, and included the Evaporative Stress Index in order to improve the flash drought early warning through better monitoring tools.