Kevin E. Trenberth, Aiguo Dai, Gerard van der Schrier, Philip D. Jones, Jonathan Barichivich, Keith R. Briffa & Justin Sheffield

Nature Climate Change

Published date December 20, 2013

Global warming and changes in drought

  • Assesses issues with the the formulation of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the data sets used to determine the evapotranspiration component
  • States that changes in the global water cycle in response to the warming will not be uniform
  • States the contrast in precipitation between wet and dry regions and between wet and dry seasons will probably increase, although there may be regional exceptions
  • States climate change may not manufacture droughts, but it could exacerbate them and it will probably expand their domain in the subtropical dry zone