GWX — Meteorological Drought — Severe-or-Worse Land Area

Which drought types show a detected increase, and where

Each of the three deficits below at its D2+ (severe or worse) default, against this site's combined detection standard: IPCC's likelihood criterion at each variable's multiple-comparisons-adjusted bar, plus a magnitude-vs-variability check. Meteorological and agricultural drought come from ERA5, hydrological from GloFAS — so where two or three agree, they agree across unrelated data.

Drought type	Global	Africa	Asia	Europe	North America	South America	Oceania
Meteorologicala rainfall deficit	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	no
Agriculturala root-zone soil-moisture deficit	yes	no*	yes	no	yes	yes	no
Hydrologicala river low-flow deficit	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	no

no* marks a borderline case that clears the flat 10% bar and misses its adjusted one: Africa agricultural at p=0.066 against 0.051. Reported as what it is rather than rounded into agreement. Every verdict comes from the same computation the panels below render, so this table cannot disagree with them. See the Methodology page for the construction of each index.

Meteorological Drought — Severe-or-Worse Land Area — North America

Monthly

% of North America's land area (5°-coarsened grid, each cell weighted by its spherical area times its land fraction) at a selectable USDM-equivalent drought severity level or worse each month -- same 10 selectable series (5 SPI-style + 5 SPEI-style) as the global Drought page, scoped to North America. Unit: % of land area.

Series

Source: ARCO-ERA5 (ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis, Google Cloud mirror)

Computing trend…