Editing IPCC:AR6/SR15/Chapter-3 (section)

== 3.3.4.1 Observed and attributed changes ==

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The IPCC AR5 assessed that there was ''low confidence'' in the sign of drought trends since 1950 at the global scale, but that there was ''high confidenc'' e in observed trends in some regions of the world, including drought increases in the Mediterranean and West Africa and drought decreases in central North America and northwest Australia (Hartmann et al., 2013; Stocker et al., 2013) <sup>[[#fn:r124|124]]</sup> . AR5 assessed that there was ''low confidence'' in the attribution of global changes in droughts and did not provide assessments for the attribution of regional changes in droughts (Bindoff et al., 2013a) <sup>[[#fn:r125|125]]</sup> .

The recent literature does not suggest that the SREX and AR5 assessment of drought trends should be revised, except in the Mediterranean region. Recent publications based on observational and modelling evidence suggest that human emissions have substantially increased the probability of drought years in the Mediterranean region (Gudmundsson and Seneviratne, 2016; Gudmundsson et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r126|126]]</sup> . Based on this evidence, there is ''medium confidence'' that enhanced greenhouse forcing has contributed to increased drying in the Mediterranean region (including southern Europe, northern Africa and the Near East) and that this tendency will continue to increase under higher levels of global warming.

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