Emergent reorganization and increased persistence of meteorological drought across Africa

African droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, but whether their underlying behavior is also changing remains unclear. Here, we combine observational climate data from the Climatic Research Unit with a 16-member climate model ensemble from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 to examine drought dynamics across four African regions. Using drought-event characteristics, persistence analysis, statistical clustering and compound-risk assessment, we show that warming is associat