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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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“The wind speed peaked in spring, and the change in wind speed was generally in agreement with the global trend (Roderick et al. 2009; Sheffield et al. 2012).”
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Funk, C. C., Harrison, L., Alexander, L. V., Peterson, P. J., Behrangi, A., & Husak, G. J. (2019) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab4a6c · Cited by 36
“In general, it is broadly accepted that temperaturebased estimates of atmospheric water demand tend to over-estimate anthropogenic increases (Sheffield et al 2012, Trenberth et al 2014).”
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“A similar pattern of annual scPDSI trends over Sweden can be found from Sheffield et al. (2012), although there is a larger domain with a drying trend appearing in the south.”
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BackgroundVariability and changes in hydrological drought in the Volta Basin, West Africa
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“In addition to the precipitation and temperature, the available energy, humidity, and wind speed can also affect the scPDSI via controlling evapotranspiration (Sheffield et al., 2012).”
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“More recently, Sheffield et al. (2012) pointed out that using a more up-todate parameterization of PET to calculate drought indices led to different conclusions on drought occurrence globally.”
BackgroundEnlargement of the semi-arid region in China from 1961 to 2010
Yin, Y., Ma, D., & Wu, S. (2018) · Climate Dynamics · doi:10.1007/s00382-018-4139-x · Cited by 30
“Recently, observed trends in global dryness have been contradictory and very uncertain (Dai 2013; Feng and Fu 2013; Greve et al. 2014; Mueller and Zhang 2016; Sheffield et al. 2012; Trenberth et al. 2014).”
Backgroundda Silva, H. J. F., Gonçalves, W. A., & Bezerra, B. G. (2019) · International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation · doi:10.1016/j.jag.2019.01.015 · Cited by 30
Zhang, H., Wu, C., Yeh, P. J. ‐., & Hu, B. X. (2020) · International Journal of Climatology · doi:10.1002/joc.6555 · Cited by 31
“…drawn much scientific attention since a few decades ago (Palmer, 1965; Shafer and Dezman, 1982; Shukla and Wood, 2008; Vicente-Serrano et al., 2010; Sheffield et al., 2012; Trenberth et al., 2013; Huang et al., 2014), which in general be categorized into the meteorological, hydrological,…”
BackgroundKhan, M. J. U., Islam, A. K. M. S., Das, M. K., Mohammed, K., Bala, S. K., & Islam, G. M. T. (2020) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-020-02832-0 · Cited by 30
“Thornthwaite method of PET calculation uses the average temperature only, and the errors associated with the Thornthwaite estimation are documented to be larger than the Hargreaves or Penman-Monteith method thus exacerbating the drought condition globally (Sheffield et al. 2012).”
MethodAshrafi, S. M., Gholami, H., & Najafi, M. R. (2020) · Journal of Water and Climate Change · doi:10.2166/wcc.2020.088 · Cited by 30
Fooladi, M., Golmohammadi, M. H., Safavi, H. R., & Singh, V. P. (2021) · Journal of Environmental Management · doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113283 · Cited by 31
Lai, C., Chen, X., Zhong, R., & Wang, Z. (2021) · Agricultural Water Management · doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2021.107273 · Cited by 30
On the Estimation of Potential Evaporation Under Wet and Dry Conditions
Tu, Z., & Yang, Y. (2022) · Water Resources Research · doi:10.1029/2021wr031486 · Cited by 30
“Since first introduced some 70 years ago for climate classification (Thornthwaite, 1948), the concept of potential evaporation (EP) has been widely used in the studies of meteorology, hydrology, agriculture, ecology and related fields (Maes et al., 2019; Milly & Dunne, 2016; Scheff & Frierson, 2014; Schellekens et al.…”
BackgroundWu, G., Chen, J., Kim, J., Gu, L., Lee, J., & Zhang, L. (2022) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2022.127937 · Cited by 33
Assessment of the grassland carrying capacity for winter-spring period in Mongolia
Yan, N., Zhu, W., Wu, B., Tuvdendorj, B., Chang, S., Mishigdorj, O., & Zhang, X. (2023) · Ecological Indicators · doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.109868 · Cited by 30
Kheyruri, Y., Nikaein, E., & Sharafati, A. (2023) · Environmental Science and Pollution Research · doi:10.1007/s11356-023-25283-3 · Cited by 30
Long, B., Zhang, B., He, C., Shao, R., & Tian, W. (2018) · Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · doi:10.1029/2018jd028436 · Cited by 30
Breathing Phenomenon of Soil Desiccation Cracking: Insights From Novel Geophysical Observations
Xu, J., Tang, C., Yang, Y., Lin, L., Zhang, H., Cheng, Q., Zhang, X., Liu, B., & Shi, B. (2024) · Journal of Geophysical Research Earth Surface · doi:10.1029/2023jf007318 · Cited by 29
“Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article. increasingly globalized world (Sheffield et al., 2012).”
BackgroundOgunrinde, A. T., Adigun, P., Xue, X., Dairaku, K., & Jing, Q. (2025) · International Journal of Digital Earth · doi:10.1080/17538947.2024.2447342 · Cited by 29
“This definition is based on two main reasons: Firstly, prolonged periods of low drought intensity can significantly impact vegetation growth, agricultural production, and the environment (Sheffield, Wood, and Roderick 2012; Wang et al. 2016).”
Causes of drying trends in northern hemispheric land areas in reconstructed soil moisture data
Mueller, B., & Zhang, X. (2015) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1499-7 · Cited by 29
“2006) even though the magnitude of these trends can be substantially different when different formulations are used to compute the PDSI (Sheffield et al. 2012).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialLiu, Y., Ren, L., Ma, M., Yang, X., Yuan, F., & Jiang, S. S. (2015) · Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment · doi:10.1007/s00477-015-1042-4 · Cited by 29
“Sheffield et al. (2012) claimed that the simplified model of potential evaporation that PDSI uses responding only to changes in temperature had overestimated increased droughts globally in recent decades.”
BackgroundProbabilistic assessment of projected climatological drought characteristics over the Southeast USA
Mitra, S., Srivastava, P., & Lamba, J. (2018) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-018-2161-y · Cited by 29
Ali, Z., Hussain, I., Faisal, M., Almanjahie, I. M., Ahmad, I., Khan, D. M., Grzegorczyk, M. A., & Qamar, S. (2019) · Tellus A Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography · doi:10.1080/16000870.2019.1588584 · Cited by 29
“…variable (Vicente-Serrano et al., 2010) is insufficient for drought monitoring, as multiple factors (such as, precipitation, humidity, wind speed, temperature and heat waves, etc.) are involved in it (Wilhite, 1994; Sheffield et al., 2012; Hao and Singh, 2015; Vicente-Serrano et al., 2015).”
BackgroundCan We Use Satellite-Based FAPAR to Detect Drought?
Peng, J. X., Müller, J., Blessing, S., Giering, R., Danne, O., Gobron, N., Kharbouche, S., Ludwig, R., Müller, B., Leng, G., et al. (2019) · Sensors · doi:10.3390/s19173662 · Cited by 29
Donat, M. G., Sillmann, J., & Fischer, E. M. (2019) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-814895-2.00003-3 · Cited by 31
Spatiotemporal vegetation response to extreme droughts in eastern Brazil
Rebello, V. P. A., Getirana, A., Filho, O. C. R., & Lakshmi, V. (2020) · Remote Sensing Applications Society and Environment · doi:10.1016/j.rsase.2020.100294 · Cited by 29
Yuan, S., Quiring, S. M., Kalcic, M. M., Apostel, A. M., Evenson, G. R., & Kujawa, H. (2020) · Journal of Hydrology · doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125064 · Cited by 28
Resilience to Large, “Catastrophic” Wildfires in North America's Grassland Biome
Donovan, V. M., Twidwell, D., Uden, D. R., Tadesse, T., Wardlow, B. D., Bielski, C. H., Jones, M., Allred, B., Naugle, D. E., & Allen, C. R. (2020) · Earth s Future · doi:10.1029/2020ef001487 · Cited by 30
“…limitations (i.e., the algorithm lacks incorporation of information on important drivers of evapotranspiration; Alley, 1984; Riley et al., 2013; Sheffield et al., 2012), PDSI is one of the most commonly used drought indices in fire literature (e.g., Hessl et al., 2004; Heyerdahl et al., 2008;…”
Method
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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