A storyline attribution of the 2011/2012 drought in Southeastern South America

Abstract

The 2011/2012 summer drought in Southeastern South America (SESA) was a short but devastating event. What would this event have looked like under pre-industrial conditions, or in a +2 degC world? We find that climate change causes the region to be at a higher risk of drought. However, we found no large-scale changes in the half-month water budgets. We show that the climate change induced positive precipitation trend in the region outweighs the increased temperatures and potential evapotranspiration during the 2011/2012 drought.