A June 2025 paper in Nature develops an ensemble of high-resolution global drought datasets for 1901 to 2022 and finds an increasing trend in drought severity worldwide. It concludes that atmospheric evaporative demand has increased drought severity by an average of 40% globally. It reports that in 2018 to 2022 the area in drought expanded by 74% on average compared with 1981 to 2017, with evaporative demand contributing 58% of that increase, and that in 2022, 30% of global land was in moderate to extreme drought, 42% of it attributed to increased evaporative demand.
Feynman
The datasets very likely do show worsening drought as they define it, but the 40%, 58% and 42% rest on a step from evaporative demand to water shortage that is not shown to have been checked, on a demand term that drought itself pushes up, and on unstated accounting choices.
06 claims /06 objections /10 of 13 sources cited / lenses: Mechanism, Feedback, Signal and noise
Each square is an objection. Larger means heavier. No lens challenged claim 01; that is not the same as holding.
01An ensemble of high-resolution global drought datasets for 1901 to 2022 shows an increasing trend in drought severity worldwide.
02Increased atmospheric evaporative demand has raised drought severity by an average of 40% globally.
03In 2018 to 2022 the area in drought expanded by 74% on average compared with 1981 to 2017.
04Evaporative demand contributed 58% of that 2018 to 2022 increase in drought area.
05In 2022, 30% of global land was in moderate to extreme drought, and 42% of that area is attributed to increased evaporative demand.
06Implied premise: drought severity as measured by these datasets, which count evaporative demand, reflects real water shortage on land rather than only a greater potential for water loss.