In #10 we saw an overview which included the idea that a rainfall deficit is one part of a soil moisture deficit. But it’s the part we can measure. AR6 says, p.1573: Global studies generally show no significant trends in SPI [drought index for rainfall] time series (Orlowsky and Seneviratne, 2013; Spinoni et al., 2014), and in derived drought frequency and severity data (Spinoni et al., 2019), with very few regional exceptions.
SoD, Do you have any idea why the number of data stations anomalies went way down over time? (Figure 1)
Seems like the number of data stations would increase over time.