Impacts of flash droughts on crop yields across global agricultural regions

Recent research on agricultural drought mainly focuses on traditional drought events, with limited assessments of flash droughts. Moreover, existing studies often neglect the differential responses of crops to flash droughts across various growth stages and irrigation regimes. To address these gaps, multisource datasets, including global crop yield data, phenological data, rain-fed and irrigated system data, and soil moisture data, were integrated to develop a flash drought identification method that accounts for the drought onset speed. Via the use of this approach, we extracted global flash drought events and systematically evaluated their impacts on crops in major agricultural regions worldwide. The results demonstrated that:① Global flash drought events increased significantly from 1940 to 2022, with a notable increase in drought onset rates. ② Crops exhibited increased vulnerability to flash droughts at the emergence to milk-ripe growth stages. ③ Among the different irrigation systems, rain-fed agricultural areas were most severely affected by water scarcity induced by flash droughts, whereas groundwater-irrigated crops demonstrated superior resilience. This study provides valuable insights for risk prevention and control to ensure global food security.