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As Global Drought Deepens—Climate Change Kills by a Thousand Cuts

Like climate change in general, drought acts as a “threat multiplier,” and making the drought-climate connection helps audience grasp its wide-ranging impacts.

Unlike climate change–fueled hurricanes, floods, and other weather disasters that wreak fast and obvious havoc, drought sneaks into our lives more slowly—eroding the resources needed to live daily life. And with 2026 expected to be the hottest year in recorded history, thanks in part to an extraordinarily powerful El Niño, the coming months will bring a deadly combination of extreme heat and extreme drought that we as journalists need to explain to our audiences and public officials so they can respond accordingly.

While droughts have always been a part of human history, climate change is creating conditions that expand, intensify, and extend their impact. Last year, drought affected one-third of the planet—caused not by a lack of rainfall but rather the fact that a warmer atmosphere is substantially “thirstier.” As temperatures rise, evaporative demand increases, pulling more moisture from streams, reservoirs, soils, and plants, making drought more likely, and harder to recover from. Recent research estimates that by 2050, drought will lead to a 20 percent reduction in crop production across two dozen countries, leading to a death toll of over 3 million—far outpacing other weather-related fatalities connected to tropical systems.

In the United States,........

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