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Climate science

Historical drought trends revisited

Nature volume 491, pages 338–339 (2012)Cite this article

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A new assessment of drought trends over the past 60 years finds little evidence of an expansion of the area affected by droughts, contradicting several previous estimates. See Letter p.435

The authors' results suggest a high uncertainty in global-scale drought trends over the past 60 years and little evidence of an increase in the total area affected by droughts. A recent IPCC assessment5 highlighted strong uncertainties in historical drought records and, in particular, inconsistent conclusions of studies carried out after the Fourth Assessment Report with respect to some regional drought trends. Sheffield and colleagues' results are consistent with this assessment, but also suggest that methodological issues may partly explain reported conflicting results in the literature.

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Figure 1: Severe drought.

N. HARNIK/AP

Figure 2: Drought drivers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sonia I. Seneviratne is at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.,

    Sonia I. Seneviratne

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  1. Sonia I. Seneviratne
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Correspondence to Sonia I. Seneviratne.

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Seneviratne, S. Historical drought trends revisited. Nature 491, 338–339 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/491338a

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