Drought & Flooding
Status: Nuanced
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not refer to drought in the singular. Therefore, The Science is nuanced. The IPCC makes statements about Meteorological, Hydrological, Ecological, and Agricultural drought respectively.
Meteorological Drought
“The regional evidence on attribution for single AR6 regions generally shows low confidence for human contribution to observed trends in meteorological droughts at regional scale, with few exceptions.”
— IPCC AR6 WG1
Hydrological Drought
“There is still limited evidence and thus low confidence in assessing these trends at the scale of single regions, with few exceptions.”
— IPCC AR6 WG1
Ecological & Agricultural Drought
“There is medium confidence that human influence has contributed to changes in agricultural and ecological droughts and has led to an increase in the overall affected land area”
— IPCC AR6 WG1
To complicate matters, the IPCC states the following regarding precipitation and flooding:
“The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation have likely increased at the global scale over the majority of land regions with good observational coverage.” So, as Vaclav Smil points out, we should expect more rainfall and hence more water available for capture, storage, and use.
In case you’re worried about heavier rainfall leading to flooding, the IPCC is clear that climate change does not cause flooding. “Heavier rainfall does not always lead to greater flooding; Confidence about peak flow trends over past decades on the global scale is low;”
“In summary, there is low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale. Confidence is in general low in attributing changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events to human influence because of a limited number of studies and differences in the results of these studies, and large modeling uncertainties.”
— IPCC AR6 WG1
Food Security
Finally, and thanks to fossil fuel-based ammonia, fertilizers, machinery, and more, the global food supply is also capable of feeding the world.
