Global Drought Overview September 2024

Severe droughts are currently affecting most of South America, southern Africa and the Zambezi basin, the Mediterranean, and eastern Europe with extremely dry and warm conditions. Heatwaves and warm spells are exacerbating the impacts of the lack of precipitation. The average temperature is abnormally high, registering global record values in July 2024. Soil moisture and vegetation conditions are severely affected, with negative anomalies over large areas of the world. Many rivers in major basins worldwide, including the Amazon, La Plata, and Zambezi, have registered very low discharge in 2023-2024. The rare combination of strong positive phases of ENSO and the Indian Ocean Dipole, together with the warm phase of the Tropical North Atlantic and climate change, are likely key drivers of drought in South America, southern and central Africa, and extreme heat in South America, Africa, the Mediterranean and East Europe. Agricultural productivity has been affected in many regions of the world as the extreme conditions occurred during critical periods of the growing season, with severe economic and social impacts. Crop damages and losses have caused the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) Acute Food Insecurity to range from stressed to crisis level in most of the monitored regions. Wildfire danger is high in eastern Brazil, the western U.S., southern and eastern Africa, central Asia, Australia, and eastern Europe. Seasonal forecasts point to warmer than average conditions in the following months. Early April 2024 precipitation shifted the seasonal forecast towards wetter values but according to May-June-July forecast dry conditions are expected after this temporary relief. Close monitoring of the drought evolution and proper water use plans are needed.

JRC.E.1 - Disaster Risk Management