S. G. Dobrovol’skii, M. N. Istomina, and I. P. Lebedeva. Long-Term Variations of Agricultural Drought Parameters in the World // Water Resources. 2022. V. 49. № 2. Pp. 258–269.

The article analyzes the changes over 1976–2016 in the frequencies of agricultural droughts in the world, the coordinates of the centers of drought areas, the dates of the start and end of the droughts, their duration, material (financial) and humanitarian losses due to droughts in the world as a whole and separately for world regions with different levels of economic development. The changes in the number of droughts, the size of the global latitudinal band of droughts, their durations and dates of their ends were found to show a monotonous positive trend. A positive statistically significant trend in the evolution of material/financial losses due to droughts was also revealed and found to be more typical of the group of developing countries. It is hypothesized that changes in the natural characteristics of droughts may be due to global climate changes, while the dynamics of losses due to droughts is also determined by socioeconomic factors.