Recent droughts in the United States are among the fastest-developing of the last seven decades

Abstract

Drought has traditionally been characterized as a slow process that requires seasons or even years to fully develop. Recent fast-evolving drying events, however, have challenged our forecasting and response capabilities. A fundamental question emerges: are droughts setting in more quickly? We address this question by evaluating drought intensification rates for the contiguous United States and find that median drought onset rates did not change significantly in 1951–2021. Conversely, development of fast onset droughts (i.e., the 95th percentile of the drought intensification rates per drought region in a given month of the time series) has been speeding up in recent years across most of the country. As a result, intensification rates of the quickest-onset droughts in 2011–2021 are among the fastest of the last seven decades.