How do different drought types respond to climate change?

More frequent, longer, and more intense droughts are expected in many regions of the world because of climate change. Although drought can propagate from precipitation to runoff and soil moisture, the anticipated climate change impact, however, varies with different drought types. We investigate the response of meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural droughts to climate change for the end of this century using a multimodal ensemble of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) under the four Tier 1 ScenarioMIP scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5). The projected changes in five characteristics (median duration, longest duration, median intensity, peak intensity, and frequency) of the different drought types at the global level are compared on seasonal and annual time scales. Our results show that the spatial extent and magnitude of the increasing signals in all the characteristics rise from meteorological to hydrological and agricultural droughts. This gradient is highest for the median and longest duration of droughts with the largest increases among the five characteristics considered.