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Little change in global drought over the past 60 years
Abstract
Drought is expected to increase in frequency and severity in the future as a result of climate change, mainly as a consequence of decreases in regional precipitation but also because of increasing evaporation driven by global warming. Previous assessments of historic changes in drought over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries indicate that this may already be happening globally. In particular, calculations of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) show a decrease in moisture globally since the 1970s with a commensurate increase in the area in drought that is attributed, in part, to global warming. The simplicity of the PDSI, which is calculated from a simple water-balance model forced by monthly precipitation and temperature data, makes it an attractive tool in large-scale drought assessments, but may give biased results in the context of climate change. Here we show that the previously reported increase in global drought is overestimated because the PDSI uses a simplified model of potential evaporation that responds only to changes in temperature and thus responds incorrectly to global warming in recent decades. More realistic calculations, based on the underlying physical principles that take into account changes in available energy, humidity and wind speed, suggest that there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years. The results have implications for how we interpret the impact of global warming on the hydrological cycle and its extremes, and may help to explain why palaeoclimate drought reconstructions based on tree-ring data diverge from the PDSI-based drought record in recent years.
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“Two recent studies published in Nature Climate Change 25 and Nature 26 came to opposing conclusions about whether there are noticeable changes in drought trends as a result of climate change.”
From A Big Data Guide to Understanding Climate Change: The Case for Theory-Guided Data Science (2014) · cites this paper as [26]
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Self-citationRapid warming accelerates tree growth decline in semi‐arid forests of Inner Asia
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“Furthermore, a few recent studies have claimed that the drought indices provide better estimates of the true global drought trend when using the PM evapotranspiration framework because of its more comprehensive physics (Sheffield et al. 2012; Trenberth et al. 2014).”
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“Observed changes in droughts are method-dependent (Sheffield et al 2012, Dai 2013, Trenberth et al 2014) while changes in precipitation extremes are spatiallyheterogeneous (Donat et al 2013).”
MethodSelf-amplified Amazon forest loss due to vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks
Zemp, D. C., Schleussner, C.-F., Barbosa, H. M. J., Hirota, M., Montade, V., Sampaio, G., Staal, A., Wang-Erlandsson, L., & Rammig, A. (2017) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms14681 · Cited by 413
Projected Impacts of Climate Change on Drought Patterns Over East Africa
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The biggest drought events in Europe from 1950 to 2012
Spinoni, J., Naumann, G., Vogt, J., & Barbosa, P. (2015) · Journal of Hydrology Regional Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2015.01.001 · Cited by 432
Human water consumption intensifies hydrological drought worldwide
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“Recent studies by Dai (2011, 2013) and Sheffield et al (2012) suggest that anthropogenic global warming is likely responsible for intensifying meteorological droughts, e.g. enhanced evaporative demand and altered monsoon circulation over regions such as Africa and Asia.”
BackgroundAnthropogenic Drought: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities
AghaKouchak, A., Mirchi, A., Madani, K. M., Baldassarre, G. D., Nazemi, A., Alborzi, A., Anjileli, H., Azarderakhsh, M., Chiang, F., Hassanzadeh, E., et al. (2021) · Reviews of Geophysics · doi:10.1029/2019rg000683 · Cited by 445
Climate Change and Drought: the Soil Moisture Perspective
Berg, A., & Sheffield, J. (2018) · Current Climate Change Reports · doi:10.1007/s40641-018-0095-0 · Cited by 414
Self-citationRETRACTED ARTICLE: Warming accelerates global drought severity
Gebrechorkos, S. H., Sheffield, J., Vicente-Serrano, S. M., Funk, C. C., Miralles, D. G., Peng, J. X., Dyer, E. L. E., Talib, J., Beck, H. E., Singer, M. B., et al. (2025) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09047-2 · Cited by 452
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“Sheffield et al. (2012) analyzed, at the global 49 scale, the influence of using a simple empirical temperature-based formulation and a more physical 50 model, based on several meteorological variables, to estimate ETo.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialBenchmark products for land evapotranspiration: LandFlux-EVAL multi-data set synthesis
Mueller, B., Hirschi, M., Jiménez, C., Ciais, P., Dirmeyer, P. A., Dolman, A. J., Fisher, J. B., Jung, M., Ludwig, F., Maignan, F., et al. (2013) · Hydrology and earth system sciences · doi:10.5194/hess-17-3707-2013 · Cited by 385
Self-citationFlexas, J., Niinemets, Ü., Gallé, A., Barbour, M. M., Centritto, M., Díaz‐Espejo, A., Douthe, C., Galmés, J., Ribas‐Carbó, M., Rodrı́guez, P. L., et al. (2013) · Photosynthesis Research · doi:10.1007/s11120-013-9844-z · Cited by 380
“Furthermore, it has been suggested that climate change may exacerbate the present shortage of water and is likely to increase drought in some Earth regions (IPCC 2007), although this has not happened yet at the extent predicted (Dai 2011; Sheffield et al. 2012).”
BackgroundD’Amato, A. W., Bradford, J. B., Fraver, S., & Palik, B. J. (2013) · Ecological Applications · doi:10.1890/13-0677.1 · Cited by 376
Changes in concurrent monthly precipitation and temperature extremes
Hao, Z., AghaKouchak, A., & Phillips, T. J. (2013) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034014 · Cited by 370
“These data are interpolated to a 0.5◦ × 0.5◦ resolution and have been used in a variety of studies (Rawlins et al 2012, Sheffield et al 2012).”
MethodInfluentialA review of remote sensing applications for water security: Quantity, quality, and extremes
Chawla, I., Karthikeyan, L., & Mishra, A. K. (2020) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.124826 · Cited by 392
Elusive drought: uncertainty in observed trends and short- and long-term CMIP5 projections
Orlowsky, B., & Seneviratne, S. I. (2013) · Hydrology and earth system sciences · doi:10.5194/hess-17-1765-2013 · Cited by 382
“Recent studies (Dai, 2013; Sheffield et al., 2012) on observed global drought changes over the 20th century also find contradictory results, depending on the investigated indices.”
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A two-fold increase of carbon cycle sensitivity to tropical temperature variations
Wang, X., Piao, S. L., Ciais, P., Friedlingstein, P., Myneni, R. B., Cox, P. M., Heimann, M., Miller, J. B., Peng, S., Wang, T., et al. (2014) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature12915 · Cited by 376
Human and climate impacts on the 21st century hydrological drought
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Responses of terrestrial aridity to global warming
Fu, Q., & Feng, S. (2014) · Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · doi:10.1002/2014jd021608 · Cited by 366
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Hydrological drought across the world: impact of climate and physical catchment structure
Lanen, H. A. J. V., Wanders, N., Tallaksen, L. M., & Loon, A. F. V. (2013) · Hydrology and earth system sciences · doi:10.5194/hess-17-1715-2013 · Cited by 371
“…at global or continental scales for present and future climate (e.g., Andreadis et al., 2005; Sheffield and Wood, 2008a, b; Shukla and Wood, 2008; Sheffield et al., 2009, 2012; Dai, 2011, 2013; Hannaford et al., 2010; Prudhomme et al., 2011; Stahl et al., 2011; Corzo Perez et al., 2011; Wehner…”
BackgroundDrought effects on US maize and soybean production: spatiotemporal patterns and historical changes
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Drought vulnerability and risk assessments: state of the art, persistent gaps, and research agenda
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Insights On the Impact of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis On Tomato Tolerance to Water Stress
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“Climate change is expected to cause more frequent and severe drought in large areas of the planet (Sheffield et al., 2012).”
Pan-European seasonal trends and recent changes of drought frequency and severity
Spinoni, J., Naumann, G., & Vogt, J. (2016) · Global and Planetary Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.11.013 · Cited by 347
GRACE-REC: a reconstruction of climate-driven water storage changes over the last century
Humphrey, V., & Gudmundsson, L. (2019) · Earth system science data · doi:10.5194/essd-11-1153-2019 · Cited by 337
“, 2016), and global to regional assessments of the recurrence of extreme hydrological droughts and their impact on ecosystems (Sheffield and Wood, 2007; Sheffield et al., 2012; Beguería et al., 2014; Griffin and Anchukaitis, 2014; Kusche et al., 2016; Dai and Zhao, 2016; Spinoni et al., 2017; Heim, 2017; Rudd et al.,…”
BackgroundCompound droughts and hot extremes: Characteristics, drivers, changes, and impacts
Hao, Z., Hao, F., Xia, Y., Feng, S., Sun, C. J., Zhang, X., Fu, Y. H., Hao, Y., Zhang, Y., & Yu, M. (2022) · Earth-Science Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2022.104241 · Cited by 335
Observed changes in dry-season water availability attributed to human-induced climate change
Padrón, R. S., Gudmundsson, L., Decharme, B., Ducharne, A., Lawrence, D. M., Mao, J., Peano, D., Krinner, G., Kim, H., & Seneviratne, S. I. (2020) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/s41561-020-0594-1 · Cited by 330
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“Previous studies have argued that the Penman-Monteith model yields more physically accurate predictions of potential evapotranspiration than models that only include temperature and radiation [Sheffield et al., 2012].”
BackgroundIncreasing flash droughts over China during the recent global warming hiatus
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Comparison of satellite-based evapotranspiration models over terrestrial ecosystems in China
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Metadata
- Authors
- Sheffield, J., Wood, E. F., & Roderick, M. L.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Australian National University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Sheffield, Justin
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2012-11
- Volume
- 491
- Issue
- 7424
- Pages
- 435-438
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2015522309
- Cited by
- 1,978
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 97 · 2025: 126 · 2024: 131 · 2023: 162 · 2022: 188 · 2021: 196 · 2020: 174 · 2019: 159 · 2018: 160 · 2017: 139 · 2016: 144 · 2015: 121 · 2014: 110 · 2013: 66 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 79.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (submittedVersion)
- ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Hydrology and Drought Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Keywords
- global drought, Palmer Drought Severity Index, drought trends, potential evaporation, global warming, water cycle, drought indices, climate change impacts, water balance modeling
- MeSH terms
- Models, Theoretical, Temperature, Time Factors, Droughts, Global Warming
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