Droughts are hitting harder where Australians live, work and farm

When droughts take hold, they don’t just dry out the land, they strain food security, damage economies and affect both our physical and mental health. Australia is no stranger to these impacts, with the country frequently experiencing severe and widespread droughts. Recent decades have left Australia with lasting environmental, economic and social scars of drought: from enduring the longest drought in the historical record (the “Millennium drought”; 1997-2009), to the most severe (the “Tinderbox drought”; 2017-2019). And now with another drought emerging in the south of the country, it begs the question: is Australia facing more droughts? 

In a new study, published in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, researchers aim to answer that question by quantifying how Australian droughts have changed over the past century. They consider droughts from multiple aspects of the water cycle – from rainfall (meteorological drought) to soil moisture (agricultural drought) and runoff (hydrological drought). The researchers also develop and use an impact-based metric to capture changes in the social and economic impacts of drought.

Perhaps surprisingly, most of the country has seen a decline in both time and area under drought over the historical record (1911-2020). However, looking at more recent decades (1971-2020), the pattern reverses; showing increasing trends of these drought characteristics. This is consistent across the different drought types and reflected in the impact-based metric, showing that the effects of droughts have worsened over the last half century.

These findings have real world consequences for life in Australia. Much of the land experiencing increasing drought in recent decades is over key agricultural areas and near major population centres. These trends show that droughts are increasingly applying more pressure to farmers, population centres and water resources, highlighting the rising impacts of Australian droughts. Whether these changes are driven by global warming or part of the natural cycle is perhaps not the critical question. The fact is, conditions and impacts are worsening, and action is required from relevant sectors and all levels of governments to ensure long-term food security and reliable water supply.

To read the full paper ‘Historical trends of seasonal droughts in Australia‘, go to: https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/29/5555/2025/

By Matt Grant, Associate Student, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, UNSW.