According to the American Meteorological Society (AMS), drought is defined as “a period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently long enough to cause a serious hydrological imbalance. To assess “abnormally dry weather,” there needs to be a standard of “normal” to act as a comparison. However, establishing what time period should be used to constitute “normal” is not straightforward. In a changing climate, past human experience is not always an indication of what to expect in the future. The changing climate is causing the probability of extreme events, like drought, to change, a phenomenon known statistically as “non-stationarity.”

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