Most Australians have known drought in their lifetimes, and have memories of cracked earth and empty streams, paddocks of dust and stories of city reservoirs with only a few weeks’ storage. But our new research finds over the last 1,000 years, Australia has suffered longer, larger and more severe droughts than those recorded over the last century.
These are called “megadroughts”, and they’re likely to occur again in coming decades. Megadroughts can last multiple decades – or even centuries – with occasional wet years offering only brief relief. Megadroughts can also be shorter periods of very extreme conditions.
We show megadroughts have occurred several times across every inhabited continent over the last two millennia. They’ve dealt profound damage to agriculture and water supplies, increased fire risk, and have even contributed to toppling civilisations.
