Roger Pielke

The most recent IPCC report concluded about the detection and attribution of trends in drought at the global scale and also for the US. …It is more challenging to achieve detection and attribution of trends in drought than, say, hurricanes or tornadoes, because drought can be defined and measured in many ways. Detecting and attributing trends in drought impacts is even more challenging. …The IPCC finds with high confidence (i.e., an eight-in-10 chance) that human-caused climate change influences the global hydrological cycle and thus drought. …At the global scale, the IPCC has not detected and attributed trends in any of the three types of drought for any region with high confidence. For the US, the IPCC has only low confidence (i.e., two-in-10 chance) in detected or attributed trends in all three types of drought for all regions, except Western North America where it has medium confidence (i.e., five-in-10 chance) in the detection and attribution of trends in agricultural/ecological drought.