Interesting. Annual total precipitation over North China during 1999-2002 saw the lowest 4-year record of the last 50 years, and this resulted in a severe water shortage in major big cities of the area.

These orientations from my side reg. Ethiopia / East-Africa.

2001-2: most severe drought in regions /states / province: Amhara, Afar, Tigray, Oromiya, Soamli-Region;

This most -severe drought of past decades resulted into the biggest international and national relief-operation ever. It was effective and supported 5-7 mio. people and safed some 1-2 mio lives;

Precise data are available with: DPPC Ethiopian, UN-OCHA, UN-WFP, UN-FAO, independant and civil agencies;

The drastic and dramatic impact of the drought resulted also from the fact, that after previous doughts the national and international actors DID NOT address the specific situation and root-causes of drought & famine in Ethiopia and helped rather to establish a silly relief-business-machinery of gigantic proportions and a political-strategy for US and EU to be present and influential in this important geographic point of Africa;

Major root-causes of Ethiopian famines: The orthodox church imposes up to 170 days of the year, on which farmers are not allowed to enter the field for work, in order to celebrate questionable holy persons and give money to the church on these "holidays". Secondly: 40% of the arable land is cropped with TEFF, Eragrostis teff, the lowest yielding food-crop of the world.

The fact, that the root-causes of Eth. famines as consquence of droughts were never allowed to be addressed in sober logical terms seems to reveal that the international actors and powers use droughts and their consequences for their power-political regional plays.

Parthenium hysterophorus ( Congress weed) (Invasive species)  invaded Ethiopia in the context of the droughts, partly also it was brought into the country  from US and elsewhere as impurities in relief-grains; I would not be astonished to read one day, that this invasive plant was purposely mixed into the relief grain, in order to trigger the "sustainable" relief-business.

Prosopis juliflora invaded large parts in East-Africa incl. ETH, SOMALIA, ERITREA and SUDAN in the past decades. Its fantastic proportions, characteristics / properties and drought-resistance is basically a blessing, but hardly perceived by population and by drought-analysis-experts.

I would like to encourage a holistic view into droughts, rather than a pure meteorological one. (PS: my views are from a 9-year work-period in Ethiopia)

The more recent droughts deserve a parallel view and analysis.

Susan, are You preparing a manuscript (and there is need for some case studies)?

No plans for a manuscript at this time. I am exploring how the dynamics of drought synchronizes regional populations. Do you have case studies that can help me?

Dear Susan

I work in a semi arid region in Brazil, and we also suffered a severe drough period that time. in 2003 still had less rain after a few years of low rainfall, culminating in complete drought of several reservoirs in the region in 1998 and 2003. As a result, we increased eutrophication of reservoirs and the densities of planktonic communities. In the phytoplankton community there was an increase and dominance by cyanobacteria and in zooplankton it was an increase of Cladocera that requires large amounts of food like Moina minuta, and rotifers resistant to eutrophication. When the reservoir had very little water, it was found just the rotifers Brachionus urceolaris, and a kind of algae. 

I have no data about terrestrial environments

trying to answer your questiona below

1) Species (fauna or flora). You can found a doctor thesis about phytoplankton regarding an earlier drough period I will attached it (but is in portuguese language)

2) Location - the Taperoá watershad is located in the coordinates 06o 51’ 31”e 7o 34’ 21” Sul and 36o 00’ 55” e 37o 13’ 09 W

3) Response variable (productivity, abundance, mortality, etc.)

In aquatic systems an increase in productivity was observed. Abundance of eutrophication resistant species increased, and others decresead, till only one rotifer species and algae were present, when a high degradation water quality was observed.

4) Measure(s) used to identify drought severity (e.g., annual precipitation or soil moisture relative to long-term average). Annual precipitation until completely absence of water in the reservoir. 

I hope i have been able to help

best regards

Cristina Crispim

For the severe drought in North China, you may refer to a paper entitled "Multi-Time-Scale Climate Variations over Eastern China and Implications for the South-North Water Diversion Project" published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology in 2011. The northern area of the south to north water diversion project as defined in the paper corresponds to North China.

Hi Susan

I am from University of Georgia in Savannah Georgia in USA and we experienced severe coastal ecosystems problems related to the drought of 1998-2004 time period.

1) Species (fauna or flora impacted) -  Salt Marsh flora such as Smooth Cord grass (Spartina alterniflora), Salt meadow Cord grass (Spartina patens), and Black needle rush (Juncus roemerianus) all were adversely effected by the drought.

2) Location: Salt marshes in Coastal Georgia USA

3) Response variable (productivity, abundance, mortality, etc.) High Mortality

4) Measure(s) used to identify drought severity (e.g., annual precipitation or soil moisture relative to long-term average) -

Water quality in our local estuaries were extreme due to lack of rain through the drought that lasted from 1998-2004 in our area. Salinity increases up to 35 ppt or higher caused severe stresses on plant species in the salt marsh. The lack of rain flow from fresh water rivers and no rainfall caused the increase in salinity. Temperatures were also high in the summer and the 2 together caused added stress and flora and fauna in our local estuaries.

A good summary is attached to the article and there is a technical report attached as well.

Water quality data from coastal waters with pictures are in the technical report listed on my publication list here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Sweeney-Reeves Title of report is: Technical Report: Adopt-A-Wetland, Technical Report for Volunteers April 2007

Species: Another species impacted was the blue crab ( Callinectes

sapidus)

Location:  GA USA coastal waters and tidal creeks

Response variable: Blue Crab population suffered high mortality.

Measured used to identify drought or cause of the mortality: The salinities over the time period 1998-2004 caused further stress on the blue crab population due to a protozoan  dinoflagellate called Hematodinium perezi. During years of normal rainfall the protozoan is dormant in the estuarine sediments however when the conditions are right and during times of high salinities the protozoan comes out of the dormant state. When the protozoan/parasite is in the water it infects the  oxygen carrying hemolymph cells and hemolymph protein of the blue crab blood and actually suffocates the blue crab. During the drought years the crabbing fishery was dismal. Since then it has bounced back to normal populations.

See 2 articles below for more information.

Mary

We studied snowy egrets and black-crowned night-herons along the Carson River and Humboldt River in Nevada from 1997 to 2006. The drought occurred from 2000 to 2004. Effects on reproductive rates, mercury exposure, biochemistry and histopathology have been documented in a series of papers (Arch. Environ Contam. toxicol. 53:269-280, 2007; Ecotoxicology 17:117-131, 2008; J. Toxicol Environ Health Part A 72:1223-1241,2009). A final paper in the series has been submitted to Ecotoxicology that deals with snowy egret post-fledging dispersal, timing of migration and survival from ~20 days of age until migration.  The first three papers can be found with a search under Henny at Research Gate, or contact me at  [email protected]  and I can email them to you.  Chuck Henny

Maria, Mary, and Chuck: Does the amended definition of drought conditions change which years you classified as "drought" years?

Hi Susan

Yes by 1999 we were in moderate drought conditions, so the southeast United States was in a drought by 2000 and 2001. It officially ended I believe by 2004, so there were consecutive years of little rain and high temperatures especially in summer. This period would qualify for your research project.

We used annual discharge of the Carson River (see Fig. 2 in Henny et al. 2007 Archives Environ. Contam. Toxicol. p271) which flows out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains). The worst years were 2001, 2002 and 2004, but 2000 and 2003 were not good. The long term USGS data for the river is also shown in the figure. You need to read the papers to see what was happening to the birds studied. Chuck Henny

Hi Susan,

Indeed, during this same drought period, the region of Belezma in Algeria has known an exceptional acceleration of the Atlas cedar decline over very large areas, and even the influence on some insect’s bioecological aspects. So these long periods of drought have influenced directly on the physiology of trees and have exposed them to forest decay and indirectly on the nutrition of forest pests which are adapted progressively to new hosts, I cite the almond bark beetle Scolytus amygdali G., as an example.

I have a work in press about the ‘Biotope change of scolytus amygdali Guerin possibly related to climate change in Belezma (Algeria)’. This beetle lives usually on fruit trees and strictly on Rosaceae (in an agricultural biotope), was identified between the most important damaged xylophagous insects of Cedrus atlantica M. in Belezma forest (Algeria) in 2008. So, the forest biotope represents a favorable environment for the development of this bark beetle, by the influence of global changes, mentioning especially the major consequences of drought on trees that lose a lot of their resistence capacities, which attract some insects having a very large range of diet.

In order to show the periods of long droughts that marked the Belezma region, a US team of specialists in dendrology and climatology at the University of Arizona, came to Algeria in 2005-2006. They have highlighted the influence of climate change on the Atlas cedar. They noted from the period 1148 until 2006, two periods of long duration of consecutive drought. The first period is from 1557-1561 and the second one is from 1998-2002.

For more information you can read my master memory (in French) on this link: ......

For more information you can read my master memory (in French) on this link: ......http://theses.univ-batna.dz/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=1804&Itemid=4

Yamina: Unfortunately, I cannot read French. Will your work in press have an English abstract? I am interested in your research because, based on Figure 2.1.1 from your thesis, our study areas appear to have corresponding precipitation patterns. During the 80-year period of record (1925-2004) for my study area in northern Arizona, 2004 was the wettest year (130 cm) followed by 1982 (118 cm) and 1992 (115 cm). Although 2001 was also an extremely dry year (29 cm), annual precipitation was average in 1981 (57 cm) and 1983 (66 cm) instead of reduced like in your study. Perhaps the differences reflect how we quantified annual precipitation. I used a biological year (April-March) instead of a calendar year (January-December), so my measure of precipitation included values for January-March of the following year. In my study, precipitation was higher than average in both 1982 (118 cm) and 1984 (74 cm), which could have increased the annual measures of precipitation in 1981 and 1983.