11 Facts About Droughts
- Drought is related to a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time.
- While much of the weather that we experience is brief and short-lived, droughts are unique in that they are a gradual phenomenon that in severe cases can last for many years and can have devastating effects on agriculture and water supplies.
- Of all the water on earth, only .003% is available fresh water that is not polluted, trapped in soil, or too far under ground. During a drought, shared sources of water such as reservoirs, rivers and groundwater for wells are in jeopardy of running dry.
- One of the interesting features of drought is that it can occur in any climate–arid or humid.
- Droughts are a common feature of climate in California, Colorado, Georgia, and New York, as well as in Brazil, Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, and Australia.
- In the United States, drought can have major impacts on agriculture, recreation and tourism, water supply, forest and wildland fires, energy production, and transportation.
- Nationwide losses from the U.S. drought of 1988 exceeded $40 billion, exceeding the losses caused by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the Mississippi River floods of 1993, and the San Francisco earthquake in 1989.
- In developing countries, drought may affect people’s access to food and water.
- In the Horn of Africa the 1984–1985 drought led to a famine which killed 750,000 people.
- Since the 1970s, the percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought has more than doubled. Global warming is largely blamed.
- As the climate heats up, droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe in some locations.
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