Of all the weather-related phenomena that can cause severe economic and environmental damage in the United States,

droughts have historically had the greatest impact on the largest number of people, according to the National Climatic Data Center. ut unli!e hurricanes or tornadoes, which are easily identified and straightforward to classify in terms of wind speeds, droughts are much tougher to define. Definition of drought "n simple terms, a drought is a period of unusually dry weather that persists long enough to cause environmental or economic problems, such as crop damage and water supply shortages. ut because dry conditions develop gradually and impact different regions differently, there#s no agreed upon way to pinpoint when a drought begins or ends, or to ob$ectively assess its severity. Of the many schemes for classifying droughts, the most widely used is the Palmer Drought Severity Index %&DS"', which combines temperature, precipitation, evaporation, transpiration, soil runoff and soil recharge data for a given region to produce a single negative number representing conditions there. (his inde) serves as an estimate of soil moisture deficiency, which roughly correlates with a drought#s severity, and thus, its impacts. Drought maps (he U.S. Drought *onitor, an organi+ation run by government and academic partners that maintains a nationwide drought map, uses the &DS" to categori+e dry weather into five levels of severity,

abnormally dry %category D-, corresponding to a &DS" between -..- and .../' moderate drought %D., &DS" between -0.- and -0./' severe drought %D0, &DS" between -1.- and -1./' e)treme drought %D1, &DS" between -2.- and -2./' e)ceptional drought %D2, &DS" between -3.- and -3./'

(he effects range from slow crop and pasture growth to widespread crop failure and water emergencies. 4dditionally, the Drought *onitor defines droughts as either short-term, if they#ve lasted less than si) months, and long-term for prolonged events. Causes of drought 4bnormally low rainfall is, of course, the primary cause of drought. ut one can#t say in general how little rainfall it ta!es for a region#s &almer inde) to sin! into drought territory, because the inde) ta!es regional averages into account. 5or e)ample, 0- inches of rainfall in a year is normal in 6est (e)as, and would correspond to a &almer inde) around -7 but 0- inches would be less than half the yearly average in 8irginia, and would probably correspond to an inde) lower than -3.-, signifying an e)ceptional drought in the state.

(his regional specificity of the categori+ations ma!es sense in terms of land usage, 6etter regions tend to be filled more densely with people, wildlife and crops, and so more rain is re9uired to maintain normal conditions. A dry future? :owever, as the human population increases in arid regions as well as wet ones, so will the demand for water and ; with water supplies dropping at a faster rate ; so will the li!elihood of drought. "n fact, population booms can trigger droughts almost by themselves. 4 severe drought that gripped the Southeast from 0--3 to 0--< was largely attributed by climate scientists to a 3- percent rise in the region#s population during the preceding .3 years, which placed unprecedented demands on the water supply. 4side from the human population e)plosion, global warming is also e)pected to fuel increased fre9uency and severity of droughts in many parts of the globe in future. 4ccording to pro$ections by the "ntergovernmental &anel on Climate Change, droughts will especially increase in subtropical areas, such as the U.S. Southwest, 4ustralia and parts of 4frica and =urope, as =arth#s warming causes more evaporation and shifts weather patterns, pushing the paths of storms that bring thirst-9uenching rains farther north History of U.S. droughts Droughts have been cited as a scourge of human!ind since biblical times, but the nation#s most devastating drought on record occurred in the ./1-s during the so-called >Dust owl> years. 4ccording to the National Climatic Data Center, the drought affected almost the entire &lains and covered more than ?- percent of the country at its pea! in @uly ./12. "t caused the migration of millions of people from the &lains to other parts of the country, especially the 6est Coast. *ore recent droughts, such as those of the ./3-s, ./AA and 0---, have also had serious economic and societal impacts. etween ./A- and today, .? drought events have cost a combined B0.- billion in the United States, and thousands of people have died due to the effects of drought. "n @une 0-.0, 33.</ percent of the land in the lower 2A U.S. states were in drought, the highest figure in the .0-year history of the U.S. Drought *onitor.