But more importantly, while Pielke had written that there was no change in drought trends, he put a little footnote - y thing to a journal paper that if you bothered to track down out of idle curiosity and then read through the whole thing shows that there has in fact been an increase in drought in the West and Southwest. (wottsupwiththat.com)
The paper goes on to argue that the PDSI, which has been relied upon for drought characterization since the 1960s, is too simple a measure and may (the authors» word) have led to overestimation of global drought trends in previous climate - change assessments — including the IPCC's previous (2007) assessment, which found that «More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics.» (climatesciencewatch.org)
The main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where increased temperature has led to rising drought trends (Groisman et al., 2004; Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006). (rogerpielkejr.blogspot.ru)