edu.ucar.opensky::articles:24041 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-25T06:42:34.398392 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7bk1gr4 Dynamical characteristics of drought in the Caribbean from observations and simulations 2020-11-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7bk1gr4 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0100.1 Herrera, D. A. author Ault, T. R. author Carrillo, C. M. author Fasullo, John T. author Li, X. author Evans, C. P. author Alessi, M. J. author Mahowald, N. M. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Climate models consistently project a significant drying in the Caribbean during climate change, and between 2013 and 2016 the region experienced the worst multiyear drought in the historical period. Although dynamical mechanisms have been proposed to explain drought in the Caribbean, the contributions from mass convergence and advection to precipitation minus evaporation (P ⁻ E) anomalies during drought are unknown. Here we analyze the dynamics of contemporaneous droughts in the Caribbean by decomposing the contributions of mass convergence and advection to P ⁻ E using observational and simulated data. We find that droughts arise from an anomalous subsidence over the southeastern Caribbean and northeastern South America. Although the contributions from mass convergence and advection vary across the region, it is mass convergence that is the main driver of drought in our study area. A similar dynamical pattern is observed in simulated droughts using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Large Ensemble (LENS). UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2020 American Meteorological Society (AMS). None eng geoscientificInformation