The authors provided this statement: Water storage (WS) plays a profound role in the lives of people in the Middle East and North Africa and Mediterranean climate “hot spots”. Simulated is WS changed by greenhouse gas (GHG) warming with and without stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI). WS significantly increases in the Arabian Peninsula and decreases around the Mediterranean under GHG. While SAI partially ameliorates the GHG impacts, Projected WS increases in dry regions and decreases in wet areas relative to the present climate. This is an area that is going to continue to receive attention as climate change progresses, and the effects of SAI on this potentially uninhabitable region in the future are of paramount importance.

Agro-ecological drought has so far been subject to comparatively little research in the detection and attribution literature, compared to meteorological drought. Nonetheless, it is of direct relevance for socio-environmental impacts. This paper addresses such knolwedge gap by focussing on a recent major drought event.