A study in International Journal of Climatology finds no evidence for a long-term drought trend across Europe amid modest global warming. The research was a collaborative effort undertaken by scientists at universities and research institutes in Spain (lead author), Egypt, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Oman, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.

Results reveal a general absence of statistically significant long-term trends in the study domain, with the exception of significant trends at some stations, generally covering short periods. The study found droughts in Western Europe have been spatially diverse, with variability in the number and intensity of drought being the dominant pattern, instead of a homogeneous increase or decrease across the region or in any particular area over time

Roger Pielke Jr., Ph.D., of the University of Colorado, examined multiple lines of government data to respond to claims climate change has been causing more severe droughts in recent years. Data from the U.S. Drought Monitor and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show drought has declined across the United States since the 1890s and has continued to do so since 2000.

With a large swath of western United States currently experiencing a severe drought, Pielke also examined drought in the Colorado River Basin (CRB) since 2000. Drought there has increased modestly, but in the context of 1900 to 2020, the number and severity of droughts in the CRB have not increased. Pielke notes a paper from Earth Interactions in June 2020 shows CRB droughts have become neither more severe nor drier since 300 AD. The same paper reported: "The driest drought occurred during 1901-04, … [and] the longest drought period occurred during 1943-56.” A paper published in March in the Journal of Climate finds, as the title states, "U.S. Pacific Coastal Droughts Are Predominantly Driven by Internal Atmospheric Variability."

Looking beyond a parochial focus on drought conditions in the United States, the folks at No Tricks Zone have collected and summarized the research of no less than six papers published in the last year (five since March 2021 and one published in July 2020) in a variety of peer-reviewed journals from different teams of international researchers indicating droughts in Africa, China, Greece, India, and for grasslands globally are no more frequent or severe at present than they have been historically.

For example, research shows drought conditions were far worse in the 1700s and first half of the 20th century than they are at present in northern China. In the eastern Mediterranean, droughts were more severe and longer in length, extending multiple decades in the 900s and 1300s, than they have been in recent centuries. The same data show from 1986 to 2015 the eastern Mediterranean experienced above-average precipitation in June and July. Another paper shows India experienced droughts of four years in length or greater four times in the 1700s and 1800s, but only once in the twentieth century, between 1958 and 1962.

These studies demonstrate that wherever you look across the globe, recent periods of drought have not been unusually frequent, extended, or severe when compared with historical examples. Another commonality found in these papers, at least those that sought to explain the cause of droughts as opposed to simply recording drought occurrences, is they attribute droughts to natural factors, primarily shifts in large-scale, multidecadal ocean circulation patterns.

One of the most persistent and persistently disproven but still oft-repeated claims made by global warming alarmists is human-caused climate change is causing or will cause an increase in the number, length, and severity of droughts. Since 1988 the United States has had some of its wettest years on record. In fact, despite carbon dioxide concentrations topping 415 parts per million, 65 parts per million higher since 1988, for the first time in recorded U.S. history, no part of the continental United States is in either severe or extreme drought, and less than 10% of the United States faces modest drought (meaning between 2 and 2.0 inches below normal rainfall for the year). The first time in the record that more than 90% of the US has experienced conditions of NO drought, and since 2000, the linear trend in the data indicates that the overall proportion of the US experiencing no drought conditions increased from about 50% to about 60%, and according to the Drought Monitor, more than 283 million people currently live in regions experiencing no drought.

This is the most people in the history of the U.S. to experience no drought conditions at once. Geological records indicate at times in the past parts of the United States have experienced droughts lasting decades and even hundreds of years. With drought nearly nonexistent for the first time in recorded history and the trend indicating less, not more drought, may we put the final nail in the coffin of the myth of human-induced droughts?

Yet Climate change scare mongers still claim there is more frequent drought. As of April 9, 2019, the National Drought Mitigation Center reported that the amount of drought in the continental U.S. had dropped to a 21st century low They claim increased risks of injury and death from extreme weather events. However, U.S. deaths from extreme weather have declined 98% since the 1920s and continue to decline. They claim an increased human health risks from air pollution. yet the five primary pollutants measured by the EPA have declined between 25% to 88% since 1990 and continue to improve. Finally, the projections of warming that will occur in the future are based on climate models that over-predict warming by 2.5 to 3 times too much.