Link between warming and past droughts questioned Posted January
3, 2013; 11:25 a.m. A series of recent droughts from Australia
to the United States has led some scientists to warn that global
warming has already begun to increase worldwide drought. But new
research from Princeton and the Australian National University
in Canberra has found that this might not be the case. The
theory that increased temperature would lead to more rapid
evaporation and increase the frequency and severity of droughts
seems logical. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reported in 2007, "more intense and longer droughts have
been observed over wider areas since the 1970s." But the new
research indicates that the development of drought is much more
complex than previously thought and that the reports of
increasing drought were caused by weaknesses in the mathematical
model used to simulate drought rather than any real drying
trend. "The overall view has been that as temperature increases
drought is going to incr