Cited by 1,978Hydrology and Drought AnalysisPlant Water Relations and Carbon DynamicsClimate variability and models

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Little change in global drought over the past 60 years

Sheffield, Justin, Wood, Eric F., Roderick, Michael L.·2012·Nature

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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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“This issue has been recently discussed in several studies (Milly & Dunne, 2016, 2017; Roderick et al., 2015; Sheffield et al., 2012) and is again highlighted here (Figures 2 and 4–6).”
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BackgroundSelf-citation
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“1 of 17 This behavior has been especially evident since the 1980s (Sheffield et al., 2012), when a relatively rapid increase in global temperature was observed (Hartmann et al., 2013).”
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Method
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“This result is consistent with the observed nonsignificant trend of Penman–Monteith (PM)based PDSI (0.08% 6 0.21% yr21 during the period 1980–2008) reported by Sheffield et al. (2012) when using different combinations of precipitation and radiation datasets to generate an ensemble of sc_PDSI.”
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“This definition has two main reasons; firstly, the consistent low drought intensity could also greatly influence vegetation growth, agricultural production, and the environment (Sheffield et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2014).”
Background
Spatiotemporal extremes of temperature and precipitation during 1960–2015 in the Yangtze River Basin (China) and impacts on vegetation dynamics
Cui, L., Wang, L., Qu, S., Singh, R. P., Lai, Z., & Yao, R. (2018) · Theoretical and Applied Climatology · doi:10.1007/s00704-018-2519-0 · Cited by 73
“…of global warming, extreme climate events have received increasing attention by scientific communities (Aguilar et al. 2005; Lehner et al. 2006; Sheffield et al. 2012; Xu et al. 2009), due to the fact that the variations in extreme climate events are more sensitive to climate change than those…”
Background
Assessing estimates of evaporative demand in climate models using observed pan evaporation over China
Liu, W., & Sun, F. (2016) · Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · doi:10.1002/2016jd025166 · Cited by 72
Climate change impacts on future snow, ice and rain runoff in a Swiss mountain catchment using multi-dataset calibration
Etter, S., Addor, N., Huss, M., & Finger, D. C. (2017) · Journal of Hydrology Regional Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2017.08.005 · Cited by 75
“Temperature based methods tend to overestimate evapotranspiration with increasing temperatures (Sheffield et al., 2012) and more physically based methods might provide more accurate estimations of PET.”
Method
Determination of water required to recover from hydrological drought: Perspective from drought propagation and non-standardized indices
Wu, J., Chen, X., Love, C. A., Yao, H., Chen, X., & AghaKouchak, A. (2020) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125227 · Cited by 72
A composite drought index developed for detecting large-scale drought characteristics
Faiz, M. A., Zhang, Y., Zhang, X., Ma, N., Aryal, S., Ha, T. T. V., Baig, F., & Naz, F. (2021) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.127308 · Cited by 72
Spring-summer droughts in the Czech Land in 1805-2012 and their forcings
Brázdil, R., Trnka, M., Mikšovský, J., Řezníčková, L., & Dobrovolný, P. (2014) · International Journal of Climatology · doi:10.1002/joc.4065 · Cited by 72
On the use of Standardized Drought Indices under decadal climate variability: Critical assessment and drought policy implications
Núñez, J., Rivera, D. A., Oyarzún, R., & Arumí, J. L. (2014) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.05.038 · Cited by 76
Characterisation and prediction of meteorological drought using stochastic models in the semi-arid Chéliff–Zahrez basin (Algeria)
Habibi, B., Meddi, M., Torfs, P. J. J. F., Remaoun, M., & Lanen, H. A. J. V. (2018) · Journal of Hydrology Regional Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2018.02.005 · Cited by 74
National-scale analysis of future river flow and soil moisture droughts: potential changes in drought characteristics
Rudd, A. C., Kay, A. L., & Bell, V. A. (2019) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-019-02528-0 · Cited by 78
“Globally there is currently conflicting evidence (Trenberth et al. 2014) as to whether droughts are changing (Sheffield et al. 2012; Dai 2013; Damberg and AghaKouchak 2014).”
From hard-path to soft-path solutions: slow–fast dynamics of human adaptation to droughts in a water scarce environment
Medeiros, P., & Sivapalan, M. (2020) · Hydrological Sciences Journal · doi:10.1080/02626667.2020.1770258 · Cited by 71
Attribution of global evapotranspiration trends based on the Budyko framework
Li, S., Wang, G., Zhu, C., Lu, J., Ullah, W., Hagan, D. F. T., Kattel, G., & Peng, J. X. (2022) · Hydrology and earth system sciences · doi:10.5194/hess-26-3691-2022 · Cited by 71
“An accurately estimated ET can therefore provide a comprehensive contribution to understanding the changes in hydrological cycles and the associated extreme events, such as droughts and floods, as well as their impacts on ecosystem productivity, water-use efficiency, and irrigation (Sheffield et al., 2012; Sun et al.,…”
A global drought monitoring system and dataset based on ERA5 reanalysis: A focus on crop‐growing regions
Vicente-Serrano, S. M., Domínguez‐Castro, F., Reig, F., Tomàs‐Burguera, M., Peña‐Angulo, D., Latorre, B., Beguerı́a, S., Rabanaque, I., Noguera, I., Lorenzo‐Lacruz, J., et al. (2022) · Geoscience Data Journal · doi:10.1002/gdj3.178 · Cited by 76
“Nevertheless, it is widely known that empirical AED approximations based on temperature data alone show limitations under global warming, as is not the case with physically based approaches (Sheffield et al., 2012; Vicente-Serrano et al., 2020).”
Applicability of long-term satellite-based precipitation products for drought indices considering global warming
Bai, X., Shen, W. H., Wu, X., & Wang, P. (2019) · Journal of Environmental Management · doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109846 · Cited by 70
An approach for identification and quantification of hydrological drought termination characteristics of natural and human-influenced series
Wang, M., Jiang, S. S., Ren, L., Xu, C.-Y., Yuan, F., Liu, Y., & Yang, X. (2020) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125384 · Cited by 71
Consequences of climate change on airborne pollen in Bavaria, Central Europe
Rojo, J., Picornell, A., Oteros, J., Werchan, M., Werchan, B., Bergmann, K., Smith, M., Weichenmeier, I., Schmidt‐Weber, C. B., & Buters, J. (2021) · Regional Environmental Change · doi:10.1007/s10113-020-01729-z · Cited by 70
On observed aridity changes over the semiarid regions of India in a warming climate
Ramarao, M. V. S., Sanjay, J., Krishnan, R., Mujumdar, M., Bazaz, A. B., & Revi, A. (2018) · Theoretical and Applied Climatology · doi:10.1007/s00704-018-2513-6 · Cited by 69
“…of Tropical Meteorology, Pune 411008, India 2 Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, India at global and regional scales (Dai 2011; Sheffield et al. 2012; Liu et al. 2013; Cook et al. 2014; Sherwood and Fu 2014; Scheff and Frierson 2015 ; Moral et al. 2017), during past few…”
Background
Aridity and desertification in the Mediterranean under EURO-CORDEX future climate change scenarios
Carvalho, D., Pereira, S., Silva, R., & Rocha, A. (2022) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-022-03454-4 · Cited by 62
“Several studies have shown that the method chosen to estimate PET strongly influences its results, and that simpler PET estimation formulas may not be accurate in a climate change context (e.g. Lian et al. 2021; Sheffield et al. 2012).”
Method
Human activities impact the propagation from meteorological to hydrological drought in the Yellow River Basin, China
Zhang, Q., Miao, C., Guo, X., Gou, J., & Su, T. (2023) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.129752 · Cited by 69
Drought variability in Inner Mongolia of northern China during 1960–2013 based on standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index
Liu, S., Kang, W., & Wang, T. (2016) · Environmental Earth Sciences · doi:10.1007/s12665-015-4996-0 · Cited by 69
“…China 2 Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China overestimated (Sheffield et al. 2012), the role of warminginduced drought stress is evident in recent studies that have analyzed drought impacts on net primary…”
BackgroundInfluential
Moving beyond run‐off calibration—Multivariable optimization of a surface–subsurface–atmosphere model
Stisen, S., Koch, J., Sonnenborg, T. O., Refsgaard, J. C., Bircher, S., Ringgaard, R., & Jensen, K. H. (2018) · Hydrological Processes · doi:10.1002/hyp.13177 · Cited by 68
Projecting potential evapotranspiration change and quantifying its uncertainty under future climate scenarios: A case study in southeastern Australia
Shi, L., Feng, P., Wang, B., Liu, D. L., Cleverly, J., Fang, Q., & Yu, Q. (2020) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.124756 · Cited by 68
Drought trend, frequency and extremity across a wide range of climates over Iran
Nouri, M., & Homaee, M. (2020) · Meteorological Applications · doi:10.1002/met.1899 · Cited by 69
“Although inconsistent trend results are obtained for drought severity and frequency mainly due to disparities between datasets, and drought characterizations and definitions, an overall drying pattern has been reported since half a century ago over the globe (Sheffield et al., 2012; Dai, 2013; Trenberth et al., 2013;…”
Background
Elevation dependence of drought legacy effects on vegetation greenness over the Tibetan Plateau
Li, P., Zhu, D., Wang, Y., & Liu, D. (2020) · Agricultural and Forest Meteorology · doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2020.108190 · Cited by 69
Projected changes in the Iberian Peninsula drought characteristics
Ojeda, M. G., Gámiz‐Fortis, S. R., Romero-Jiménez, E., Rosa-Cánovas, J. J., Yeste, P., Castro‐Díez, Y., & Esteban‐Parra, M. J. (2020) · The Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143702 · Cited by 71
Monitoring drought dynamics in China using Optimized Meteorological Drought Index (OMDI) based on remote sensing data sets
Wei, W., Zhang, J., Zhou, J., Zhou, L., Xie, B., & Li, C. (2021) · Journal of Environmental Management · doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112733 · Cited by 67
Anthropogenic warming has ushered in an era of temperature-dominated droughts in the western United States
Zhuang, Y., Fu, R., Lisonbee, J., Sheffield, A., Parker, B.-A. A., & Deheza, G. (2024) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.adn9389 · Cited by 79
“Simpler methods such as Thornthwaite ( 72 ) usually overestimate the PET magnitude and trend ( 73 ).”
Changes in drought risk over the contiguous United States (1901–2012): The influence of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans
Kam, J., Sheffield, J., & Wood, E. F. (2014) · Geophysical Research Letters · doi:10.1002/2014gl060973 · Cited by 68
“Long-term analyses for the southern U.S. [Chen et al., 2012] and the U.S. [Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006; Sheffield et al., 2012] show that there is little change or even a decrease in drought, which may be related to the weakening of oceanic controls.”
BackgroundSelf-citation
Drought Forecasting Using Stochastic Models in a Hyper-Arid Climate
Mossad, A., & Alazba, A. A. (2015) · Atmosphere · doi:10.3390/atmos6040410 · Cited by 68
“Prominently, the impact of intense long drought on natural ecosystems essentially concerns regional agriculture, water resources and the environment [4].”
Background
Impacts of growing‐season climate on tree growth and post‐fire regeneration in ponderosa pine and Douglas‐fir forests
Hankin, L. E., Higuera, P. E., Davis, K. T., & Dobrowski, S. Z. (2019) · Ecosphere · doi:10.1002/ecs2.2679 · Cited by 68
Downscaling Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence Based on Convolutional Neural Network Method to Monitor Agricultural Drought
Zhang, Z., Xu, W., Qin, Q., & Long, Z. (2020) · IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing · doi:10.1109/tgrs.2020.2999371 · Cited by 70
“The global average temperature has been rising, particularly in recent years, which leads to global warming and, thus, requires more water resources for human activities than before [5]–[8].”
Background
Probabilistic impacts of compound dry and hot events on global gross primary production
Wu, X., & Jiang, D. (2022) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac4c5b · Cited by 69
Evaluation of TRMM 3B43 Precipitation Data for Drought Monitoring in Jiangsu Province, China
Tao, H., Fischer, T., Zeng, Y., & Fraedrich, K. (2016) · Water · doi:10.3390/w8060221 · Cited by 67
“Research on droughts has received special attention in recent years due to concerns over global climate change [1–3].”
Background
Combined statistical and spatially distributed hydrological model for evaluating future drought indices in Virginia
Kang, H., & Sridhar, V. (2017) · Journal of Hydrology Regional Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ejrh.2017.06.003 · Cited by 68
“…and soil moisture can occur over many areas in low- and mid-latitudes due to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations (Dai, 2013; Rajsekhar et al., 2015; Kumar et al., 2014; Chen and Sun, 2015; Mishra et al., 2014; Dai, 2011; Wang, 2005; Burke et al., 2006; Sheffield et al., 2012).”
Background
Copulas-Based Drought Characteristics Analysis and Risk Assessment across the Loess Plateau of China
She, D., & Xia, J. (2017) · Water Resources Management · doi:10.1007/s11269-017-1826-z · Cited by 67
Photochemical Reflectance Index (PRI) for Detecting Responses of Diurnal and Seasonal Photosynthetic Activity to Experimental Drought and Warming in a Mediterranean Shrubland
Zhang, C., Filella, I., Liu, D., Ogaya, R., Llusià, J., Asensio, D., & Peñuelas, J. (2017) · Remote Sensing · doi:10.3390/rs9111189 · Cited by 67
“Droughts have occurred frequently under global warming around the world [1,2], prominently disturbing terrestrial ecosystemic services and functioning, such as water cycles [3], terrestrial production [4,5], ecosystemic respiration [4], biodiversity [6] and plant survival and mortality [7,8].”
Background
Contributing factors for drought in United States forest ecosystems under projected future climates and their uncertainty
Luce, C. H., Vose, J. M., Pederson, N., Campbell, J. L., Millar, C. I., Kormos, P. R., & Woods, R. A. (2016) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2016.05.020 · Cited by 67
“The Penman-Monteith potential evaporation formulation (Monteith, 1965), which has been adapted for use in PDSI and as part of more complex water balance models (Sheffield et al., 2012; Cook et al., 2014), implicitly carries a strong temperature dependence in the calculation of the reference evaporation as a function o…”
BackgroundMethod
Changing impacts and societal responses to drought in southwestern Germany since 1800
Erfurt, M., Glaser, R., & Blauhut, V. (2019) · Regional Environmental Change · doi:10.1007/s10113-019-01522-7 · Cited by 66
Beyond climatological extremes - assessing how the odds of hydrometeorological extreme events in South-East Europe change in a warming climate
Sippel, S., & Otto, F. E. L. (2014) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1153-9 · Cited by 74
“Also, the applied water balance proxy P − PET does not account for several other factors that determine dryness, for example antecedent soil moisture deficits (Seneviratne 2012; Sheffield et al. 2012).”
BackgroundMethod
Effects of different reference periods on drought index (SPEI) estimations from 1901 to 2014
Um, M., Kim, Y., Park, D., & Kim, J. (2017) · Hydrology and earth system sciences · doi:10.5194/hess-21-4989-2017 · Cited by 66
“As different studies have used different meteorological drought indices (Seneviratne, 2012; Sheffield et al., 2012; Trenberth et al., 2014; Nasrollahi et al., 2015; Touma et al., 2015), this study focuses on the SPEI.”
Hydrological Modeling of Climate Change Impacts
Hakala, K., Addor, N., Teutschbein, C., Vis, M. J. P., Dakhlaoui, H., & Seibert, J. (2019) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9781119300762.wsts0062 · Cited by 68
Investigation and simulations of changes in the relationship of precipitation-runoff in drought years
Tian, W., Liu, X., Liu, C., & Bai, P. (2018) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.08.015 · Cited by 65

Authors: Sheffield, J., Wood, E. F., & Roderick, M. L.
Affiliations: Princeton University (US)
Australian National University (AU)
Corresponding author: Sheffield, Justin
ORCID: Sheffield, Justin
Wood, Eric F.
Roderick, Michael L.
Venue: Nature
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published: 2012-11
Volume: 491
Issue: 7424
Pages: 435-438
ISSN: 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
1476-4687
DOI: 10.1038/nature11575
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
Licence: www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
www.springer.com/tdm (vor)
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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Little change in global drought over the past 60 years

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