JACKSONVILLE, Fla – You’ve heard about heatwaves for years, those long stretches of high temperatures that put stress on people, power grids, and pets.
But there’s a new term now entering the weather lexicon: ‘thirstwaves.’ And they may be just as important — if not more— when it comes to farming, food, and our future water supply.
Thirstwaves are not about how hot the air is. They’re about how thirsty the atmosphere is.
These are prolonged periods where the air pulls water out of the soil and plants at an extreme rate, even when it hasn’t rained in days.
Think of it like the atmosphere turning into a giant sponge, sucking moisture from everything it touches. And we now have the science to back it up.
A new study looked at 40 years of data across U.S. farmland and found that these ‘thirstwaves’ — measured using a physical metric called ETos, or reference evapotranspiration —are getting more intense, more frequent, and lasting longer.
The High Plains, like Kansas and Oklahoma, are seeing some of the strongest thirstwaves, especially in intensity. Parts of the South and West Coast are seeing more events per season, and they’re lasting longer, some as long as 17 straight days.
Our part of north Florida is included in the Southern Seaboard Farm Resource Region (FRR) region, which has experienced more than 3.2 events above the national thirstwave average.
- Average thirstwave frequency: 3.2 events per season
- Trend in frequency: +0.61 events per decade
- Trend in duration: +0.16 days per decade
- Trend in intensity: +0.04 mm/day per decade
What are the impacts?
For farmers, this is serious. Even when it’s not unusually hot, the atmosphere can be working overtime to dry out crops.
Irrigation systems may not be able to keep up. And rain-fed crops? They’re even more vulnerable.
Historically, some counties went entire seasons without a single thirstwave. Not anymore. The chances of not having one have dropped by 4% per decade.