2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed

By P Gosselin on 20. September 2026

A study by Gebrechorkos et al. (published in Nature in 2025) claiming climate change is worsening global drought severity has been retracted, reports ScienceFiles here (Das nächste Klimawandel-Junk-Paper wurde zurückgezogen).

Gross errors throughout…

The ScienceFiles article reports that the study was heavily flawed, citing errors in calculations, miscoded data, misaligned comparison periods, and flawed weightings.

The now retracted paper claimed that drought severity had increased significantly since 1981, that “atmospheric evaporative demand” (PET/AED) had worsened droughts by 40% from 2018–2022 compared to previous decades, and that 30% of global land area had suffered moderate-to-extreme drought since 2022. It now appears all these findings were incorrect and based on shoddy methodology.

Reality: no detectable global drought acceleration

The ScienceFiles article highlights a follow-up study by Xu et al. (2026, published in Communications Earth & Environment), which challenged the original study. The main issue revolves around how Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) was calculated: In the retracted paper, soil dryness was overstated by assuming uniform moisture dynamics based on air dryness. When re-calculated by Xu et al., the drought severity ended up being less than one sixth of that reported in the retracted paper, and found no detectable recent acceleration in global drought.

The ScienceFiles author accuses major mainstream media outlets (such as Die Zeit and The New York Times) of uncritically spreading alarmist “climate apocalypse” headlines based on flawed science without issuing corrections after retractions.

ScienceFiles criticizes the journal Nature and peer reviewers for allowing low-quality science to be published in the first place.

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36 Comments

J Boles

September 20, 2026 10:19 am

As soon as I heard them claim that CC would cause both hot and cold, and wetter and drier, I knew it was a religion out to grab power, money and control.

MarkH

Reply to J Boles

September 20, 2026 6:01 pm

The only possible solution to it is to give complete authoritarian control to the government and allow them to take all your property. It’s that sort of religion, a cult really.

oeman50

Reply to J Boles

September 21, 2026 3:14 am

I went outside into the sun yesterday and felt hot. I knew then it was climate change.

mleskovarsocalrrcom

September 20, 2026 10:49 am

This is how the MSM operates with regards to AGW, and other Leftist propaganda. Publish a misinformation bomb but don’t mention its’ retraction using the same page/headline. That’s propaganda, not news.

Herman Pope

September 20, 2026 10:51 am

They actually wanted to retract the story, they needed to change Drought to Floods.

Joseph Zorzin

September 20, 2026 11:03 am

Retracted? But… but… it was peer reviewed! How could the peers have made such an error! 🙂

Herman Pope

Reply to Joseph Zorzin

September 20, 2026 11:14 am

Their peers are writing similar papers and they want their papers approved, they scratch each others backs. A key word is “peers”, they are all in the same game.

Curious George

Reply to Joseph Zorzin

September 20, 2026 11:53 am

Let’s retract the peers as well.

MarkH

Reply to Joseph Zorzin

September 20, 2026 6:08 pm

Pretty much everything I do at work (software development) is peer reviewed as a matter of course. If my work was this shoddy, I would likely be fired. If those tasked with reviewing my work did not catch such shoddiness, they would likely be fired too or at least strongly disciplined.

Incidents such as this (and there are many others) where clearly flawed “research” is published after supposed peer review just goes to show that the entire peer review process, as it currently stands, it not fit for purpose. Or, alternatively, that the true purpose of the current peer review system is different to what is publicly stated. In reality, the current peer review system acts as a filter to exclude heresy against the consensus dogma.

Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 11:04 am

Papers get retracted all the time.

If anything, this demonstrates that the peer reviewed system is capable of correcting itself when serious errors are discovered – rather than proving that the system is fundamentally dishonest, as this website regularly implies.

-60

Joseph Zorzin

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 11:19 am

Recent research has suggested many poor quality peer reviewed papers have been published. Sure, some get retracted, many if not most don’t- and when retracted, we seldom hear about it. Not necessarily dishonest, just that there are ulterior motives to approve of another’s paper and sometimes just stupidity.

Herman Pope

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 11:22 am

In the cases where there is powerful political pressure, as in climate alarmism, the peer review system is fundamentally dishonest, people who disagree do lose their jobs, don’t get grants, I know of some meteorologists who will not comment on climate because their comments would disagree.

cartoss

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 11:22 am

Read the OP before responding. The ‘peers’ clearly passed the junk paper. It was only retracted when a real scientist published the truth and the junk paper was holed below the waterline. Nature magazine has plenty of form when it comes to promoting propaganda as science.

Robert Kier

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 12:00 pm

Hmmm. I think the system is fundamentally dishonest. There is a great bias toward climate alarmism. I think the main reason is anti-west anti-capitalist in nature. It all begins with a hatred for the rich “billionaires” which is based on a lack of understanding of how wealth is created by freedom, i.e., free markets,

hdhoese

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 1:51 pm

“Papers get retracted all the time.” Even if that is true what is the ratio to numbers of journals and papers and compared to the history. A number of characteristics have changed including numbers of authors and references, real and more apparent boilerplate components, movement of more acknowledged to authorship, increased use of statistics, especially simulated models, and incentives for publications with emphasis shifting from qualitative to quantitative. Check out journal “Impact Factors” and speed of publication. There are at least a few published concerns in some journals. I suspect still occurring corrections were the closest and most honest writings we had compared to newer retractions.

Metcalfe, N. B. 1995. Serious bias in journal impact factors. Trends Ecology Evolution. 10(11):461. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(00)89182-X

-6

Eamon Butler

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 2:43 pm

Peers had nothing to do with the retraction. They were found wanting and the flaws were disgraceful. You could say it was unsustainable.

Rick C

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 3:19 pm

Let me know where I can find any mainstream media retractions of reporting on the claims of the original paper. I’ve seen numerous stories that state “human caused climate change leads to droughts, more frequent hurricanes, heat waves, floods, sea level rise, wild fires, …” Such claims are taken as unquestioned truths even though they all fail under objective investigation of actual evidence. The paper at issue will no doubt continue to be cited in support of “the cause” in spite of the retraction.

MarkH

Reply to Eldrosion

September 20, 2026 6:12 pm

Thinking that the publication of an obviously flawed paper after passing “peer review” is an example of the peer review system working is a fascinating conclusion to make. The peer review system literally failed, in the vein of “you had ONE JOB!” kind of failure.

What this paper got was not a peer review though, it was a dogmatic filter. It was merely examined to ensure that it did not contradict the consensus dogma.

Dave Andrews

Reply to Eldrosion

September 21, 2026 7:09 am

Roger Pielke noted back in May 2026 that 2600 papers using RCP8.5 had been published in 2026 even though it’s scenario is not possible. Have they all been retracted?

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Eldrosion

September 21, 2026 7:18 am

As expected.

No. It does not demonstrate that the peer reviewed system is capable of self-correction.

The paper was retracted when a new paper was published that demonstrated how bad the retracted paper was.

Now, about those 427 other papers that cited this pile of smellies?
Tell me oh, wise one, how will the peer review system self-correct for those?

Yes. This is catnip.
Yes. I am laughing at you.

Jim Gorman

Reply to Eldrosion

September 21, 2026 7:39 am

correcting itself when serious errors are discovered

So tell us how SERIOUS errors flow through to publication! Why bother with peer review at all if it requires other researchers to do the “peer review”?

Robert Kier

September 20, 2026 11:53 am

We should emphasize that with small increases in global temperature we would expect that more evaporation in the oceans will result in more annual rainfall on the average. What goes up must come down and I understand that the global average rainfall has increased in the past century. It seems that increasing temperature has a lot of benefits to humanity!

Tim Gorman

Reply to Robert Kier

September 20, 2026 2:36 pm

Precipitation is far more important to survival and climate than is temperature. Yet climate science focuses solely on temperature. BECAUSE IT IS EASY AND SIMPLE TO MANIPULATE. Very little that is meaningful comes easy. We’ve had the data to at estimate global conditions based on enthalpy for 40 years yet climate science hasn’t changed to using enthalpy as their metric. Nor have they changed to using degree-days instead of just a hokey mid-range value of (Tmax+Tmin)/2. That should tell a thinking person all they need to know.

Harry Durham

September 20, 2026 12:33 pm

Publishing a study that blamed warming for increased drought severity didn’t need competent analysis. Every knows it’s true.

Just ask anyone on the street who follows legacy misledia, and they’ll openly wonder if you are crazy for even asking, much less doubting such a self-evident truth.

And, unfortunately, that’s not sarcasm…

MarkW

September 20, 2026 1:19 pm

What’s surprising is not that bad science was published, but rather that it was actually retracted. Usually criticism is either ignored completely or attacked as being propaganda driven.

Harold Pierce

September 20, 2026 1:38 pm

For a quick check on US droughts I went “Drought Monitor”. There is really nice graphic of the drought status in all the states. There is some level of drought in the most of the states. There are a few states that have no drought.

Bob

September 20, 2026 1:42 pm

More good news. We need to know the names of the peer reviewers. Watching my local weather broadcast I am perplexed by their drought monitor. I always thought droughts were measured in longer periods than days. Our drought conditions change every day.

Harold Pierce

Reply to Bob

September 20, 2026 3:38 pm

For the U.S. Drought Monitor, go to:
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu
The graphic is spectacular.

Michael Flynn

Reply to Bob

September 20, 2026 5:52 pm

We need to know the names of the peer reviewers.

Good idea. Publish a list of proven ignorant and gullible dimwits.

Give some people a good laugh, but the scientific publication money-generator will plough on regardless. There’s billions of dollars in profits at stake here, you know.

Remember the golden rule – “He who has the gold, makes the rules”.

Michael Flynn

September 20, 2026 5:40 pm

Another pack of delusional amateurs trying to appear intelligent.

Edward Katz

September 20, 2026 6:25 pm

I’m surprised Nature was willing to go as far as this because other, more-alarmist outlets would keep dredging up numbers, no matter how remotely connected, that they’d claim still supported their theory.