Read here. It has been well established by the left/liberal lamestream media that 97% of "climate scientists" (that's all of 75 people) take their science lessons from Al Gore, the AGW Nobel prize winner. During 2007 Congressional testimony, Al Gore claimed that "droughts are becoming longer and more intense." As a result, a team of scientists decided to do a fact-check on Mr. Gore's (and his renowned 75 disciples) AGW-science claims. (Okay, okay.....probably Stambaugh et al. didn't give a hoot about Al Gore and the 97%-team.)
This new research determined that the 20th and 21st century droughts have been of little significance when compared to both the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age droughts that were incredibly severe.
"The six scientists report that "20th century droughts, including the Dust Bowl, were relatively unremarkable when compared to drought durations prior to the instrumental record." They note, for example, that the 19th century was the driest of the past millennium, with major drought periods occurring from about 1816 to 1844 and 1849 to 1880, during what they describe as the transition out of the Little Ice Age...write that "the approximately 61-year drought in the late 12th century (ca. AD 1148-1208) appears to be the most significant drought of the entire reconstruction," noting that it "corresponds to the single greatest megadrought in North America during the last 2000 years (Cook et al., 2007), as well as "unmatched persistent low flows in western U.S. river basins (Meko et al., 2007)." And this drought, as they describe it, occurred during the middle of the Medieval Warm Period..." [Michael C. Stambaugh, Richard P. Guyette, Erin R. McMurry, Edward R. Cook, David M. Meko, Anthony R. Lupo 2011: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology]
Additional drought-flood, severe-weather, climate-history and peer-reviewed postings.