Color scheme: D0 (yellow) = abnormally dry; D1 (orange) = moderate drought, D4 (red) is extreme drought.
“Unless my eyes deceive me, it looks like there is no net change in global drought area for 30 years.
The graph shows the proportion of the planet in drought, by intensity, 1982-2012. The graph comes from a paper in a new Nature publication called Scientific Data and is open access.”
(H/T: Watts Up With That?)