On May 27, the Future Water Conservancy Interdisciplinary Team led by Academician Tang Hongwu at SCUT, in collaboration with Academician Piao Shilong’s team at Peking University, published a research paper titled “Warming and vegetation greening drive recent surge in flash droughts” in Science Advances—a top international academic journal. Leveraging an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI)-based compound diagnostic framework, the study reveals that the surge in compound-driven flash droughts, dominated by anthropogenic forcing, is a primary driver behind the significant increase in global flash drought frequency observed over recent decades.

Flash droughts are characterized by their rapid onset and intense abruptness. In recent years, they have become more frequent globally, posing severe threats to agricultural production, water resource security, and ecological stability; however, the primary driving mechanisms behind this dramatic increase remained unclear. Conventional studies generally assumed that droughts are slow-evolving events driven mainly by precipitation deficits. To challenge this conventional perception, this study leveraged multi-source data from 1951 to 2022 and Earth system models to develop an XAI-based compound diagnostic framework for flash droughts, aiming to systematically analyze the evolutionary patterns and driving mechanisms of global flash droughts.

This achievement marks a significant breakthrough in interdisciplinary innovation. Building on this momentum, SCUT is currently advancing the development of its interdisciplinary water conservancy programs and preparing to establish the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Future Water Conservancy and Marine Sciences, aiming to create a “Water Conservancy + X” collaborative innovation paradigm. Through organized scientific research, SCUT aims to transform and elevate traditional water conservancy disciplines while driving breakthroughs in original scientific innovation.