THE fraction of the Earth’s land area suffering drought has more than doubled in the past 30 years. Rising temperatures caused by climate change are probably to blame.
Kevin Trenberth and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, worked out the severity of previous droughts using global records of temperature and precipitation dating back to the 1870s. The team found little change in the figures between the 1870s and the 1970s. But after that, the proportion of land categorised as experiencing very dry conditions began to rise from less than 15 per cent in the early…
