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Where the soil is driest
Each dot is a major rain-fed crop region, coloured by how its soil moisture compares with the same month in 1991–2020. Click a dot for the numbers.
| Region and main crops | Status | Soil moisture rank | Second opinion: DWD drought index (3 months) |
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Percentile: where this month ranks among the same month in 1991–2020 (0 = drier than any of those years). Second opinion: the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre’s drought index (Deutscher Wetterdienst), which combines rainfall from its own gauge network with evaporation estimated from temperature over the last three months, against 1961–1990. “Disagree” marks regions where the two are two classes or more apart: there the status is uncertain.
Soil moisture over the last two years
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How often has it been in drought?
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Countries that need outside help for food
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Does El Niño matter for crops?
El Niño tends to bring drought to Indonesia, Australia, southern Africa and India, and more rain to parts of South America and the southern US; La Niña tends to do the opposite. Worldwide, El Niño years have tended to raise average soybean yields by 2–5% and to shift maize, rice and wheat yields by between −4% and +1%; in La Niña years all four crops have tended to fall below normal (Iizumi et al. 2014). El Niño and La Niña dashboard →
United States: the US Drought Monitor
For the US, the official weekly drought map combines soil moisture, rainfall, streamflow and reports from the ground.
How much of the US is in severe drought?
Drought in the main US farm states
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What drives this
- El Niño and La Niña →The biggest year-to-year swing in rainfall over many crop regions.
- Heatwaves →Heat dries soils faster and damages crops at flowering.
What this drives
- Wildfires →Dry vegetation burns more easily.
- Food system emissions →How the food system feeds back into the climate.
How we know this
- Source: worldwide, NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s global soil moisture analysis and the rainfall that drives it (monthly, 0.5° grid, since 1948). Second opinion: DWD’s GPCC drought index. In the US, the US Drought Monitor. Food crises: FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS).
- Update cadence: We check every night. CPC adds each month early in the next month, DWD around the 10th; the US Drought Monitor every Thursday; FAO updates its list three times a year.
- Methods: Each region averages 2–3 grid points in its main rain-fed growing area. Its soil moisture is ranked against the same calendar month in 1991–2020 and labelled with the US Drought Monitor’s percentile classes (driest 30% abnormally dry, 20% moderate, 10% severe, 5% extreme, 2% exceptional drought).
- Uncertainty: A model estimate from rainfall and temperature, not a measurement in the field; a few points stand for a large region; 30 years give a coarse ranking at the extremes. Where few rain gauges report, the rainfall behind the model can be badly off: in 2026 CPC’s rainfall for the Paris Basin was about a third of the Paris-Orly station’s and of DWD’s analysis, so we show DWD’s independent index beside it and flag disagreements.
- Limitations: Irrigated areas are left out (the model has no irrigation). Drought is one cause of food crises among several; FAO usually names weather together with conflict, displacement or high prices.
- Primary data: NOAA CPC soil moisture · US Drought Monitor · GPCC drought index · FAO GIEWS · How this page is built