Assessing the Performance of CMIP6 Models in Simulating Droughts across Global Drylands

Both the attribution of historical change and future projections of droughts rely heavily on climate modeling. However, reasonable drought simulations have remained a challenge, and the related performances of the current state-of-the-art Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) models remain unknown. Here, both the strengths and weaknesses of CMIP6 models in simulating droughts and corresponding hydrothermal conditions in drylands are assessed. While the general patterns of simulated meteorological elements in drylands resemble the observations, the annual precipitation is overestimated by ∼33% (with a model spread of 2.3%–77.2%), along with an underestimation of potential evapotranspiration (PET) by ∼32% (17.5%–17.2%). The water deficit condition, measured by the difference between precipitation and PET, is 50% (29.1%–71.7%) weaker than observations. The CMIP6 models show weaknesses in capturing the climate mean drought characteristics in drylands, particularly with the occurrence and duration largely underestimated in the hyperarid Afro-Asian areas. Nonetheless, the drought-associated meteorological anomalies, including reduced precipitation, warmer temperatures, higher evaporative demand, and increased water deficit conditions, are reasonably reproduced. The simulated magnitude of precipitation (water deficit) associated with dryland droughts is overestimated by 28% (24%) compared to observations. The observed increasing trends in drought fractional area, occurrence, and corresponding meteorological anomalies during 1980–2014 are reasonably reproduced. Still, the increase in drought characteristics, associated precipitation and water deficit are obviously underestimated after the late 1990s, especially for mild and moderate droughts, indicative of a weaker response of dryland drought changes to global warming in CMIP6 models. Our results suggest that it is imperative to employ bias correction approaches in drought-related studies over drylands by using CMIP6 outputs.