{"id":257725,"date":"2023-05-16T17:58:34","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T15:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=257725"},"modified":"2023-05-16T17:58:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T15:58:52","slug":"note-to-yale-climate-connections-there-is-no-link-between-droughts-and-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=257725","title":{"rendered":"Note to Yale Climate Connections \u2013 There Is no Link Between Droughts and Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From\u00a0ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ByAnthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A May 11, 2023 opinion piece in Yale Climate Connections (YCC) titled, \u201cClimate change and droughts: What\u2019s the connection?<\/a>\u201d link climate change and droughts in the United States. The opinion is provably false. There is no evidence climate change is making droughts in the United States worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The YCC article opens saying, \u201cFor tens of millions of Americans, drought has become an ever-present natural disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 1: August 10, 2021, U.S. Drought map. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To bolster this claim, the article cites this August 10, 2021 graphic from the U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The YCC goes off the rails by citing a U.S. drought map from\u00a0nearly two years ago<\/em>, while making arguments about drought in the present. When you access the map that they should have referenced for their May 11th<\/sup>, article, dated May 9, 2023, an entirely different picture emerges, as seen in figure 2 below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 2: May 9, 2023, U.S. Drought map. Source: U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, YCC seems to have chosen the August 10, 2021, map for their article because the plethora of deep reds fits the narrative that climate change is causing drought, whereas the most recent map shown in figure 2, undermines this claim since virtually all the drought in the Western United States has dissipated. This is a very inconvenient truth for the story the YCC opinion piece is trying to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later in the article, the author asks and answers this question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is global warming causing more droughts?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists see a clear correlation between droughts and global warming. But a correlation between two events does not always mean one caused the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be tricky to attribute an increase in droughts to global warming because droughts are variable. In other words, they can occur every year or every few years, last for years or decades, and cause varying levels of dryness. That makes it difficult to distinguish random events from those possibly shaped by human-caused warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, which is it YCC? Is there a clear correlation, or is it tricky to make a correlation? The answer lies in real-world data, not in the opinions of pundits and doomsayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this graph of data, seen in Figure 3, provided by the National Centers for Environmental Information, (NCEI) it shows the contiguous United States percentage area product of very wet and very dry data, derived from standardized precipitation values, which are based on the U.S. Climate Divisional Dataset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Figure 3: data showing percentage of U.S that is either very wet (green) or very dry (orange) since 1895. Source, NCEI: https:\/\/www.ncei.noaa.gov\/access\/monitoring\/uspa\/wet-dry\/0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no upward or downward trend in this data. However, examining the data carefully shows that some of the biggest dry spikes are far in the past, such as in October 1952, when 78.42% of the contiguous United States was listed as very dry. This happened well before \u201chuman caused climate change\u201d was ever even a subject, during a period when the Earth was in a cooling trend. No drought since has matched the one experienced in 1952, or multiple dry periods that occurred even earlier in the 1930s and early 1900s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the historical record, YCC makes this claim:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2020 study<\/a> in the journal Science, for example, researchers observed how human-caused climate change is contributing to the 21st-century megadrought in the Western U.S. and northern Mexico by evaluating trends in modeled temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation data between 1901 and 2018. According to the study\u2019s findings, human-caused warming accounts for 46% of this drought\u2019s severity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key difference is this: \u201c\u2026modeled temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation.\u201d Model outputs are not the same as and do not match real-world data. Modeled data should never be used as a substitute for actual data when examining the past where actual data is available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Climate at a Glance: Drought<\/a>, here are a few facts that YCC should have considered before falsely implying that climate change is increasing drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time Yale was claiming the second hottest year on record<\/a>, the U.S. had record low area of drought on May 23, 2017<\/a>, when only 4.52% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought. On April 9, 2019, that record was beaten when only 4.36% of the contiguous U.S. was classified in drought by the U.S. drought monitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.N. IPCC reports<\/a> with \u201chigh confidence\u201d that precipitation has increased<\/em> over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while the IPCC reports having \u201clow confidence\u201d about any negative trends globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Droughts have always occurred, and they always will. The available evidence shows that recent years display no trend of increasing drought. If droughts aren\u2019t worsening then climate change can\u2019t be causing worse droughts. Instead, global and U.S. drought data show recent droughts have been less frequent and severe than the droughts of the early and mid-twentieth century. The recent drought history of the United States reflects natural variability, not a long-term trend upwards amid modest warming. Indeed, he United States recently underwent its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing \u201cvery dry\u201d conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author of the YCC editorial ignored these easily discoverable facts, perhaps out of ignorance\u2014which is doubtful since she is trained as a meteorologist\u2014, perhaps out of laziness, or most likely, because it undermined her predisposition to promote an alarmist climate change narrative, in this case by connecting recent droughts to climate change. In any case, it was shoddy journalism. Instead of \u201cseeking truth and reporting it<\/a>\u201d she, and YCC which published her story, promoted unwarranted fears over demonstrable facts about climate change and drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A May 11, 2023 opinion piece in Yale Climate Connections (YCC) titled, \u201cClimate change and droughts: What\u2019s the connection?\u201d link climate change and droughts in the United States. The opinion is provably false. There is no evidence climate change is making droughts in the United States worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":257739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691818090,691819348],"class_list":{"0":"post-257725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-climate-warning","10":"tag-drought","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/00110122_Editor_1600.webp?fit=1536%2C864&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-152R","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":417826,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=417826","url_meta":{"origin":257725,"position":0},"title":"Why Waste Money on a Climate Health Forecasting Tool, Yale, When Climate Related Health Issues Are Declining?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"19\/12\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent post at Yale Climate Connections (YCC) titled \u201cClimate change is boosting health care costs\u201d discusses a new online forecasting tool that tells employers extreme weather is getting worse due to climate change and will impact health more and thus raise insurance costs in the future. 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There is no data supporting the claim that either flooding or drought, two specific extreme weather events cited in the story, are worse now than they have been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/0Kansas-City.jpeg?fit=1200%2C530&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/0Kansas-City.jpeg?fit=1200%2C530&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/0Kansas-City.jpeg?fit=1200%2C530&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/0Kansas-City.jpeg?fit=1200%2C530&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/0Kansas-City.jpeg?fit=1200%2C530&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":233680,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=233680","url_meta":{"origin":257725,"position":5},"title":"Global \u2018Stilling\u2019: Is Climate Change Slowing Down the Wind?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"12\/12\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Ironically, climate theory has it that warming will happen and will reduce wind speeds over the decades ahead. According to one expert (says Yale), a 10 percent decline in wind speeds would actually result in \u201ca 30 percent drop [in output], and that would be catastrophic.\u201d","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/087-12681332789SQ8.jpg?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/087-12681332789SQ8.jpg?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/087-12681332789SQ8.jpg?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/087-12681332789SQ8.jpg?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/087-12681332789SQ8.jpg?fit=1200%2C671&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257725"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257740,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257725\/revisions\/257740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/257739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}